


summer dance

by deliveryservice



Series: born from the sea and the sky [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Fantasy, Gen, Miya Osamu-centric, did osamu ask for this? no, is he suffering anyway? yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26888029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliveryservice/pseuds/deliveryservice
Summary: The Miya twins disappeared during summer break in 2013.Just to get one thing straight: It was all Atsumu's fault.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu
Series: born from the sea and the sky [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950406
Comments: 14
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this was written based on [this drabble](https://twitter.com/genshinkaeya/status/1312951968453722112?s=20) i posted -- it's actually in the same verse, but while that's only a drabble, this is the full-length story of What Happened in Summer 2013: Miya Twins Edition. though it's mostly osamu, just getting that out there.
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2nwDMXdcmiNJ59mcdUmXuj)

**JULY 23 2013.**

SUMMER FINDS OSAMU flicking through the dog-eared pages of a second hand, long-worn book.

Osamu doesn’t read. Not really, anyway; if it’s not a cookbook or an interesting magazine, the most he would do is spare a look only to look away in the next breath, tossing dead trees away to the side. Reading doesn’t interest him (and there is nothing explicitly wrong with that), but it raises the question of _why_ and _what_ : Why is he reading? What is he reading?

“Ew,” Atsumu says the moment he catches the sight, stepping outside the inside of their house (might as well be their personal summer reprieve, what with the air conditioner making the sun more bearable for everyone) to catch Osamu lounging on the sofa beneath the canopy in their front yard; the one they’d convinced their father to build when they were four, the one they never use except in the spring or summer. It’s always too cold in fall and winter, though a similar case can be argued with it being too hot in summer.

“Ew yourself,” Osamu greets, putting down the book and letting it fall to his chest, pages still opened. That will leave a mark (for the book, not him.) “Thought you were helping mom clean the house.”

“I am!” Osamu stares, and Atsumu falters. “Okay, I _was_. She told me to go outside.”

Osamu, snickering: “And is she still cleaning inside?”

Atsumu huffs and puffs his cheeks. “Ain’t my fault I didn’t know you could lower the setting for a vacuum cleaner.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“My grades are better than yours, so what does that make ‘ya?”

Osamu picks up his book and throws it at Atsumu’s head; unfortunately, Atsumu catches it, lightning-quick reflexes that come with both innate and carefully trained athleticism. “So you were planning to use the book as a weapon? Now _that_ makes more sense.” Atsumu’s grin only grows wider and wider when Osamu dispassionately flips him off. 

“You’re younger than me, have some respect for yer elders.”

“I should’ve eaten you in the womb.”

Atsumu places his hand over his chest and gasps so loudly Osamu doubts a bandaid slapped over his mouth could’ve done anything about it. “You’re hurting my feelings! What are you doing that’s got ‘ya in such a mood, anyway? I can’t believe you’re reading”—he picks up the book still on Osamu’s chest, flips it around and squints at the title, mouth twisted in a scowl—“this ain’t a comic. Or a cookbook. Or something with pictures.” He begins, in earnest, flipping through the pages, holding up the worn spine as he flicks and flips through each page. Never stopping for longer than a second on each one.

If Osamu cared more, he would’ve gotten up from the couch to take the book from Atsumu’s hands. The thing is: He doesn’t, so he lets Atsumu squint and scrutinize and dissect the poor book because he has nothing to lose and nothing to care for.

“This mom’s?”

Osamu shrugs and places an arm over his eyes, the better to shield him from the sweltering sun. He closes his eyes and sighs—it’s still too hot. “I don’t know,” he says, realizing Atsumu’s not leaving any time soon. “I just picked out whatever from the shelf.”

“There’s some pretty interestin’ shit,” Atsumu drawls, and completely inconsiderately, flops himself down face-first on the couch without so much as a warning. Osamu gets his life knocked out of him in one heavy breath and at least two years taken off his lifespan while Atsumu gets to cackle like a crazed hyena, not realizing and not caring some of his hair got in Osamu’s mouth (of which Osamu is _still_ spitting out.) 

“Get yer own couch.”

“Fuck you, pay me.” The book slams down on Atsumu’s face as he tries to get both of his middle fingers in the air; the book doesn’t slam down lightly, because it’s heavy, and it slams down on his face with an audible thwack. Osamu doesn’t pity him because Atsumu deserves it. “Ow!” he whines and peels the book off of his face with an indignant huff; glaring at it like it’s done something criminal.

“‘Samu, I hate books.”

“Don’t worry, ‘Tsumu, I think they hate you too.”

“Meanie.”

Osamu flicks Atsumu’s forehead and sticks out his tongue, ignoring Atsumu’s exaggerated howl of pain. “Meh.”

“As I was sayin’,” Atsumu carries on, opening the book back on a page he’d thumbed shoving it under Osamu’s nose, “‘ya see this bit?”

“Bit lower, it’s too close to my eyes for me ‘ta see.”

_FAE SUMMONING RITUAL,_ the page reads, 12-point font idle and innocuous against paper-white scrapes. Underneath its massive title, in a much smaller font reads: _Proceed with caution_. There’s another warning written just beside the subtitle, scrawled in familiar handwriting Osamu can’t place, _DON’T DO THIS!!!_

Naturally, Atsumu wants to do it.

“‘Tsumu, no.”

“‘Tsumu, yes! Aren’t ‘ya at least a _little_ curious?”

Osamu values his life and also his safety, mostly his life—and maybe Osamu isn’t the smartest or the wisest, but if there’s something he does know from watching horror movies and scrolling through gruesome, paranormal experiences of other people on Reddit, it’s that you _don’t fuck with things you don’t understand_ ; especially not when you’re warned against such practices by not one, but _two_ sources. 

This is already never-minding the fact the ritual doesn’t say anything about the consequences and lists only a half-assed warning that will most definitely fall on deaf ears for the daring. Or in this case, Atsumu’s ears.

“Not really,” Osamu lies. Maybe a part of him is curious, but Osamu values his life more than idle curiosity. 

“Liar,” Atsumu calls him out. If there’s anyone who can—and will—call Osamu out on his bullshit, it’s him, and not for the first time in the past minute, Osamu laments he’d been born a twin. “Well _fine_ , ‘ya coward. If yer gonna be a wimp, then I’ll do it myself.”

So—and Osamu just wants to get this out of the way—what happens over the course of the next month is all Atsumu’s fault. He’d just gotten dragged into it to clean up after his messes, as he always does. Granted, most of the time this doesn’t lead to him gaining a whole new title he’d never wanted and getting entangled with forces just slightly beyond his (anyone’s) reach, but that isn’t the point.

Not yet, anyway.

* * *

**JULY 24 2013, MORNING.**

Osamu knows something is wrong the moment he wakes up.

A twin’s intuition is what people call it. An almost telepathic connection between twins that has them just knowing, a tug in their guts or a sinking feeling that’s almost like drowning, when something is wrong, even when the signs are absent. 

For Osamu, it’s waking up to dread pooling like a bucketful of ice in his chest and something pulling, almost _yanking_ his ribcage. Osamu, usually a late riser who’d pull his blankets over his head until it’s the last possible moment for him to get out of bed, kicks his comforter from his stomach and scrambles to stand so fast that he nearly falls over a pile of hoodies strewn across his rug.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Osamu curses, hopping on one feet over the pile and sprinting the second he’s out of the contained train-wreck that is his room, feet thudding so loudly he knows there’s a chance he’ll get an earful from his mother over breakfast later but he doesn’t _care_ , can’t care when something is wrong, something is very wrong, and even with haste, Osamu fears he might be too late.

Atsumu’s door is unlocked and that’s the first red flag.

Ever since they’d gotten separate bedrooms, Atsumu always locked his door at night. While he claimed to Osamu it was because he might have _guests_ over, Osamu knows Atsumu locks his door because he’s still scared of home invasions and monsters who don’t appear under your bed but instead enter through the front door. Atsumu hasn’t gone to bed with his door unlocked in years, so either he’d been so tired he’d forgotten, or— 

He hadn’t gone to bed at all. 

“‘Tsumu?” Osamu calls out, finding an empty room. Atsumu’s bed is completely made—there’s no way it’d been used—and all of his items are still there. No note on his study table, no signs of struggle, not even an opened window. “‘Tsumu?” Osamu tries again, closing the door behind him with a sickening croak and moving his fingers through every corner of the room, moving every book, drawing his eyes to every little thing that looks the slightest bit out of place. 

Atsumu still isn’t there.

“Fuck,” Osamu whispers, running a hand over his hair. His palm stops at his forehead and Osamu heaves, knees bending and form kneeling as he scratches at his face, heavy exhales dragged out through his mouth and goosebumps rising across his skin. “ _Fuck_.” He doesn’t know how long he sits there, heaving and wheezing and trying not to breathe because _this can’t be happening this can’t be real this has to be a dream_ , only realizing he hasn’t moved at all when he runs out of air to breathe. Slowly, Osamu puts his hands down and gasps in long lungfuls of air, not minding the way the cold burns the heat of his ragged throat.

Fuck, indeed.

“Osamu, are you up there?” he can hear his mother calling him from downstairs, worried neither of her sons had sat down for breakfast considering their track record of scarfing down her meals first thing in the morning. It’s even worse in the summer when they know they can take their time to eat and ask for seconds (and thirds.) “Osamu? Atsumu?”

“Coming!” Osamu answers and immediately winces. His throat is entirely too hoarse. “I’m fine,” he adds as an afterthought before she gets the chance to ask if something is wrong. Something _is_ wrong, but if Osamu’s theory is correct, this isn’t something he wants to get his mother involved in. The less people involved, the better. The safer. “I’ll be down in a minute!”

His mother has known him for as long as he has been born (quite literally) and while he doesn’t feel great about lying to her and going behind her back, Atsumu is already involved—no need to make the papers for being the family who’d vanished without a trace in a single night. 

There’s only one place left to check. With careful steps (it’s a miracle he’s still able to do that when bile is taunting him, niggling the back of his throat and leaving Osamu feeling _sick_ ), Osamu opens the door to Atsumu’s bathroom. The light is still on and the sick feeling of complete wrongness only grows stronger.

“What happened here?” Osamu tries sounding calm and collected; imagines he’s not trying to search for a missing twin who might not even be in one piece, this is a clinical, clean-cut case, and he’s the leading actor in some bullshit show called CSI Hyōgo. It works for a total of five seconds before the worry comes back stronger than ever like punches aimed right at the cage hiding his heart and every breath becomes a struggle.

There’s something by the vanity. Atsumu had actually cleared the space reserved for his (frankly disgusting) amounts of hair gel for a single mirror. The mirror is made of silver, its borders casting a pale sheen Osamu doesn’t care for. (He only cares about his brother.) A scrap of paper rests right beside where it’s propped upon the surface, small and innocuous.

Carefully, Osamu takes the piece of paper in his hand; it’s a small page, torn in half from an already-torn plain page of a notebook (the same one him and Atsumu use for school despite neither of them ever taking notes in class) and on it is a writing he’d always recognize.

_‘At midnight keep the fae and your destination in mind, envision your hand going through the mirror. Once you feel the pull, let go of all worries and let the current take you.’ Sounds like bullshit but whatever :P bet mom still has a mirror in her drawer_.

The paper isn’t signed, but Osamu would always, _always_ know the one person who would completely unironically add a ‘:P’ in a handwritten note. Osamu would also recognize that handwriting anywhere, and that isn’t just because they share near-identical maps of their hands.

“Osamu? Atsumu?” His mother’s voice is small and only a whisper of an echo, but it does enough to have Osamu pocketing the paper in his boxers (and hoping it won’t fall), call out an “alright, I’m coming!” loud enough it leaves his throat strained and runs his way downstairs.

It’s a painful reminder of what he has to do when he sees the table set for three.

“I was beginning to worry.” Mother smiles and places a plate of miso soup with rice and omelette on his spot at the table, not forgetting his morning glass of water. Room temperature. “You’re never this late for breakfast,” she comments.

“Late night.”

“Watching something?”

“No, uh, studying.”

The look his mother levels at him is one that lets him know if he’d wanted to lie, he should’ve come up with something better than that. Osamu picks at his rice. “Alright, don’t tell me,” she sighs. “I keep forgetting you boys are growing up—I don’t need to know every detail of your life.”

“Growing pains and all that?”

“Growing pains and all that,” she agrees. It’s always interesting for Osamu to hear his words echoed without an accent;prior to marrying his late-father, his mother had been a Tokyo city girl through and through. Sometimes, when she’s feeling nice, she’d regale him with stories of her youth. “Oh, honey, have you seen my mirror?”

Osamu tries _very_ hard not to cough his breakfast back up. “What mirror?” He knows, but it can’t hurt to ask. Maybe it’s a different mirror and Atsumu’s just playing a sick, twisted prank on him—maybe he’s hiding outside right now, waiting for Osamu to come outside so he can scare Osamu half to death.

“The silver one. Your father gave it to me before we married—it’s very special to me.”

“Haven’t seen it, sorry.” A lie.

“Keep an eye out, would you? And do wake your brother up.” She pats him once on the shoulder before she leaves him to his meal. Osamu is alone when he downs his water in a single gulp.

* * *

**JULY 24 2013, NIGHT.**

Because Osamu is the smarter twin (grades? What are you talking about?), he conducts research before he commences operation, as he’d like to call it, FUCK WITH DEMONS BECAUSE ATSUMU FUCKED UP. It’s a mouthful so he calls it Operation FwDbAFU in his head for short.

The book provides very little information aside from the obvious: Be careful before trying things you’re not even aware of; don’t talk to strangers; don’t mess with demons. He’s paraphrasing. Nothing _detailed_ is written, which strikes him as odd—it’s almost as if the book’s _trying_ to draw him into trying the ritual with half-hearted warnings and half-assed information. Osamu doesn’t think much of it, but it’s still something to note.

Fortunately, while the book doesn’t prove useful, the internet exists. Osamu sits, his back slouched, in front of his laptop despite feeling completely silly for typing ‘preparation against fae’ in the search bar. It’s stupid and if Osamu had known he’d find himself doing this a month ago, he would’ve thought something was wrong with him in the head—maybe the fae put some worms in his brain. Or dirty, muddy leaves; whatever works for them.

‘FAE SUMMONG RITUAL: Does it work?’ is the first search result, the link coming from a forum with a layout dark enough it leaves Osamu brightening his screen until he squints and a background that has him looking behind his back once to check his door was closed and there was no chance of his mother sneaking a peek at his screen—he can’t explain being on a forum where the background is a half-naked lady with a flower crown on her head and leaves covering her lady bits (in a very pathetic attempt of it.)

Results are results, and Osamu opens his notes app on his phone, eyes on the laptop screen and fingers tapping all over the layout of his phone’s keyboard as he goes. He’s deleting his search history after this.

> > **Judeytwoshoes** posted on October 1 st , 2011.
> 
> Hey! New to the forum. I’m looking for some information on summoning fae, or having them summon me? Is that possible? I live right nearby this old forest and everyone’s got their fae stories but me - kinda jealous :( If it’s possible, how do I do it and how do I stay safe? Thanks!
> 
> > **Homerian** posted on October 2 nd , 2011.
> 
> Is this an absolute must?
> 
> > **Judeytwoshoes** posted on October 2 nd , 2011.
> 
> It is. I know it’s supposed to be dangerous and everything but I want to figure that out for myself.
> 
> > **Homerian** posted on October 2 nd , 2011.
> 
> It’s your funeral.
> 
> The easiest method’s call the mirror method, anyone can do this. You need a silver mirror though, that’s what the folk like. At midnight, you just need to close your eyes and envision your hand going through the mirror - might not feel like something’s pulling at you or whatever, but if you keep doing this, it’ll happen. 
> 
> Only do this if you’re very stupid and are more interested in ‘having your own fae stories’ than valuing your life. Don’t trust the folk and look out for yourself. Don’t trust anyone.
> 
> > **Judeytwoshoes** posted on October 3 rd , 2011.
> 
> I’ll be trying this tonight. Any tips on going back?
> 
> > **Homerian** posted on October 3 rd , 2011.
> 
> That’s a one-way ticket.

No more posts following that exchange. The thread itself has been archived, the deed done a week after Homerian’s last post. ‘Don’t trust anyone’ is as vague as a piece of advice can get, but it’s something—and if there’s something Osamu’s good at (cooking, volleyball, and tuning out his own twin aside), it’s holding people at an arm’s length. Neat party trick, terrible life hack.

This might be the worst idea he’s ever had. Even worse than experimenting with his recipes and accidentally pouring in a whole bottle of vinegar into a perfectly good pan of fried rice, and _definitely_ worse than the incident him and Atsumu had gotten into last summer that’d required their mother bailing them out. Atsumu is on the line, though, and while the first thing Osamu plans to do once he finds his twin is to drag him by the ears and give him a mouthful, maybe refuse to spike his tosses for a month, he still needs to _save_ him first. 

That’s what he’s doing. (God, he’s stupid—must’ve been Atsumu rubbing off on him, because needless chivalry is more of Atsumu’s thing than his.)

He’d written a note on a post-it and stuck it by his bedroom door, as a just in case, and because he’s better than Atsumu in the sense Osamu _knows_ there’s a chance something could go wrong and this is more than a silly prank, more than just a fun little thing to do and recall to your friends once you’re back from summer break.

_Mom,_

_Gone searching for ‘Tsumu. I’ll try to be back soon. Don’t worry._

_\- Osamu._

_P.S. I left some food in the fridge so you won’t have to cook dinner for a few days._ His own way of a silent apology.

With no stone unturned, there’s only one thing left to do.

“Here goes nothing,” Osamu says. It’s not just to himself: For all he knows, there’s someone—something—listening to him behind his mirror, waiting to pull him in and keeping him captive, a friend for eternity. “If this doesn’t work, I’m going to look stupid.”

He can almost imagine the thing behind the mirror snickering at him and telling him, “yeah, you already look stupid, stupid.”

Osamu closes his eyes and steadies his breath. In, hold for three seconds, out. In, feel his stomach portruding and wait until his heart starts beating too fast in his chest, out. _Atsumu,_ Osamu proclaims as his destination, his anchor; his hands raise on their own accord, moving entirely on instinct, and the tips of his fingers graze glass and silver. “This’d better fuckin’ work.”

Just as Osamu’s begun to think he’s making a grievous mistake by making a fool out of himself to the demons residing rent-free in his bathroom (oh, they must be having a _blast_ watching him look like an idiot), he feels it.

Something formless and warm but cold curls around his wrist. Osamu tries to pry his hands away, tries to pull them back. The Thing, the mystical, whimsical thing, only grows stronger. It’s like trying to swim against the tide during a storm. The more Osamu struggles, the further he sinks.

He tries opening his eyes and the wind blows them back shut.

The floor collapses beneath him and first Osamu is falling, and then he’s floating. The force moves from his wrist to the rest of his body, and then there’s something pulling his leg and pushing his chest, knocking the wind right out of him. Osamu gasps and gasps and gasps, but there’s no air and only free-falling; and nothing else.

And when Osamu can finally open his eyes, he’s met with the scene of his bathroom around him, nothing out of place. It’d almost fool him into thinking the ritual hadn’t worked, except his hands are bleeding red and he can’t feel his fingers anymore. (They’re still there—he just can’t feel them. They’re numb, he realizes.)

Had he brought the fae to his room instead of the other way around? Was there something he’d fucked up in during the process? 

Osamu forces himself to open the door. It’s a more difficult task than usual with numb fingers—how is he supposed to command his hands to move when he can’t even feel them? 

Willpower, apparently. Sheer willpower and stubbornness and a fuck-all attitude, all of which (though mostly the last one) Osamu has in spades.

When he manages to get the door opened, Osamu’s eyes widen. The last time he’d checked, his room hadn’t been a forest.

Tall trees loom over him and they’re taller than any tree he’s ever seen with his own eyes. The sort of trees he’d see in Lord of the Rings or Narnia, but nothing he thought would still exist. The ground, riddled with dead leaves and branches, crackles as he walks, slowly as he does. He forces his hand to move the way he wants it to, using spite to help him move his hand to rest against the tree bark; nearly cries when feeling rushes back to his arms, reinvigorating his entire being with something ancient and magical.

When Osamu twists his body to look behind his back, the door is gone—nothing is there, only trees blocking his line of sight and something burning far off in the distance, but no building is there, no sign of a door he’d stepped out of just a moment ago. 

_That’s a one-way ticket_ , the reminder of the forum post sings and echoes, taunts and cackles.


	2. Chapter 2

**JULY 24, 2013?**

No matter how far Osamu wanders around the forest, he always finds himself back to where he’d started.

He knows this because bleeding fingers make for an excellent alternative to red paint. Even against the dark bark of red pines, the vibrant red leaves a mark in the shape of a handprint—and if not a visual mark, the smell of blood hangs in the air, putrid enough Osamu’s chosen to breathe through his mouth whenever he brings his hand close enough to his face for him to sniff at.

He should’ve worn shoes, Osamu laments, daring a peek at his bare feet. His skin is now marred by mud, dirt, and strange little animals he hopes aren’t biting and feeding off him. After stepping into a rock earlier, the little gap between his first and second toe’s started bleeding, too. The difference between his feet and his hands is that while he can see the mark his hands leave, the sticky, shade-slightly-darker-than-crimson liq0uid oozing out his feet fades and becomes one with the ground before it gets the chance to leave a sign that it, too, existed.

“Great,” Osamu sighs, leaning his back against a tree, ignoring the prickle that prodded his back. It’s not like he’s getting _stabbed_. “I’m here and I can’t even figure out where to go. Or how to go back.”

In regular occasions, Osamu wouldn’t want to hear himself talking out loud—it was silly and sometimes thoughts should stay thoughts rather than forming sentences, but he is alone, has been going in circles for what could very well be _hours_ , and there’s the all-too-real possibility of him going stir crazy.

He’s just doing what he needs to cope.

“This is all _yer_ fault, ‘Tsumu,” he grumbles under his breath as he attempts to veer left, trying a new direction he hadn’t gone before. Maybe this’ll stop him from going back to his starting point—and if he got lost, it’s not like it’d _change_ anything: Osamu’s already lost. “Could’ve listened to me, but no, ‘course ‘ya didn’t.”

Osamu ignores his thirst and hunger, refuses to feel the creak in his back and the ache in his hip. They’re all minor inconveniences and he can _ignore_ them because right now, his personal comfort is the last thing on his mind. All he can think about is finding Atsumu and forcing their way back home, even if that meant ripping a hole open in the sky to carry them away from the dreadful, awful, twisting maze in the guise of a forest.

The air, previously hot and humid (as the way things tend to be in summer) turns cold and windy, like stepping into fall weather after a long trek in the desert. Osamu crosses his arms together, fingers rubbing the skin of his elbows to keep warm, eyes taking in the sight of the trees around him growing taller and almost sinister and the sky which was previously light blue turn yellowish orange.

Not for the first time since he’d arrived, Osamu is left wondering what the _fuck_ is even happening.

His feet meet something wet and cold, leaving him to jump and jolt. He’d been so occupied with looking at his surroundings to realize he’d stepped into a puddle—and puddle meant there was water _somewhere_ nearby.

Osamu squints at the distance and strains his ears.

He still can’t see anything but trees, but his ears pick up on the sound of water flowing from a stream. Completely unlike running water from the pool or the confines of his tub, but similar to the song sung by rivers and the sea.

Osamu lets his ears and feet carry him to the source of the noise, moving on pure instinct rather than depending on his logic—never been his strong suit, anyway. He doesn’t count how long the walk takes him and doesn’t care; only cares when he’s kneeling by a lake, the water clearer than any river he’d ever seen with his own pair of eyes.

Cupping some water in his hands, Osamu tentatively prods his tongue past his mouth and dips it into the water. Nothing happens. No spontaneous combustion, no sudden deaths caused by choking on his own tongue. The water tastes normal—it tastes exactly what water would taste like, plain and simple—so Osamu brings his hand close to his lips, parts his mouth open and gulps down questionably sourced water down his throat, repeating the process several more times until he isn’t parched anymore.

The drink does enough to leave his stomach feeling settled. Osamu’s stomach isn’t growling anymore and the water leaves his abdomen portruding, bloated. He pokes his belly button with his finger and laughs.

Little things, he repeats in his head. It’s the little things that keeps your sanity intact when you’re in the middle of nowhere with no way out.

A considerable amount of time had passed and the water he’d consumed hadn’t murdered him when Osamu made the decision to freshen up in the lake. Peeling his clothes off his skin, he dips his toes into the water; hesitantly, at first, and when nothing comes out of the surface to swallow him whole, relaxes and fully steps in.

The water is cold against his skin, but it is not ice cold. Rather, it’s the kind of cold he’d associate with the beginning of fall—chilly and cool to the touch, but still several steps away from being truly cold. Osamu bows his head into the lake, keeping his eyes closed as he works to rinse his hair the best he can without shampoo, afterwards turning the clear water a muddy red as it waves away the remains of blood stuck on his skin, like washing away sins.

Osamu takes his time, submerged up to his nose in the water, still as a rock. It’s a lot like swimming, he realizes; skinny dipping, except instead of having it be something exciting and only mildly stupid, Osamu is hyperaware of everything around him. He can see every rustle, every shake of the trees; he hears every whisper of the wind, and they come to him like warnings. The cold is relentless against his skin and the longer he stays, the more the cool temperature melts into bucketfuls of ice.

He can’t shake off the feeling that something is wrong.

Osamu gets out of the water the moment his fingers prune, shivering with teeth chattering as the wind acts as a makeshift towel, drying his skin, before he forces himself back into his clothes. The fabric sticks to him closely, but Osamu doesn’t mind.

For just a moment, nothing happens, and Osamu questions if his instincts were being paranoid for no real reason—and then he hears it.

The sound of a crushing twig.

Osamu’s bones would’ve jumped out of his skin if they could. The hairs on the back of his neck rise, and something cold and tingling crawls down his spine. Osamu circles on his heel, slowly, pivoting with his eyes squinting and straining themselves to find the cause of the noise.

 _Bingo_. His eyes zero in on a head of white-and-black hair in the distance, only several trees away from the entrance of the lake. The figure has his back turned on Osamu, but there’s something eerily familiar about him from the back. Almost like Osamu has seen him before.

Making no attempt at subtlety, feet rushing and stepping on leaves and little water puddles loudly enough it could announce him from a mile away, Osamu quickly catches up to the mysterious figure.

“Hey,” Osamu says, still running towards him, but close enough to stretch a hand and place it on the shoulder of the walking mystery.

And then he turns around—only a little movement of his neck craned at a mildly different angle, the movement small enough to stop him from completely turning but his face is clear in Osamu’s line of view—and for Osamu, time _stops_.

Because staring at him isn’t a stranger or a monster.

It’s Kita Shinsuke, and he’s looking at Osamu with disinterest in his eyes and cruelty slanting his lips.

“Kita-san?” Osamu asks. His voice comes out strangled and raw.

“I don’t know who that is,” Not-Kita says, not unkindly. “Who are you?”

“It’s me,” Osamu pleads, gingerly letting go of his grip on Not-Kita’s shoulder.

The stranger wearing his captain’s face then turns to face him fully, arms crossed over his chest and an unimpressed expression coating his features. His sword rustled as he did, and Osamu wonders _how_ he’d fitted the impressive golden broadsword against his back.

“I don’t know who you are, _human_.” The word ‘human’ was bit out like it was a dirty word. Self-conscious, Osamu pinches the flesh of his arm. Warm and squishy—hopefully not something Kita’s impostor would see as a meal. “State your name, right now. You are trespassing on The Folk’s domain.”

“The Folk?”

“Your _name_.”

It’s weird enough seeing someone with the same built and body as your captain wearing golden armor over a black, form-fitting shirt; it’s even weirder having to introduce yourself to them, even when they look like your _captain_ who is supposed to know not only your name, but your strength and weaknesses on the court. If this is a dream, all Osamu would like is to wake up and never think—or speak—of it again.

“Osamu Miya,” Osamu introduces, and after a moment, offers a hand for Not-Kita to shake.

Not-Kita sneers and wipes his hand against his pants.

“O…kay then.”

Not-Kita doesn’t say anything. Instead, he looks at Osamu like one would look at a giant puzzle, and before he knows it, Osamu is rambling. And Osamu doesn’t _ramble_.

“Listen, I’m just here to find ‘Tsumu. I find him, I drag his ass home, and we’ll get out of yer way.”

“‘Tsumu’, you say?” Not-Kita actually looks interested, something alive sparking behind deadened eyes.

“Yeah! ‘Tsumu—Atsumu. The dumber twin with the bad dye job. Looks like a bee.”

“A bee.”

“Yeah! Barry B. Benson from that movie about bees?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tough crowd,” Osamu mutters. “Have you seen him?”

At first, Not-Kita’s mouth is opened, ready to say something like ‘no, now go back to where you came from’. Except in the last second, recognition flashes in his eyes, and he purses his lips the way someone would when they realize they might’ve found themselves signed up for more than they asked.

“He’s your brother?”

“Twin,” Osamu supplies helpfully.

“Come with me, then.” Not-Kita sighs and continues walking the way he’d been headed for prior to Osamu interrupting him, and Osamu keeps up behind him. Not-Kita doesn’t make conversation (a trait he shares with the real Kita), so neither does Osamu—until he begins feeling antsy and starts second-guessing if going off with the first person he saw was _really_ a good idea.

“What’s yer name?” Osamu asks. They’ve been walking for some time now and Not-Kita hasn’t shown any sign of fatigue. Given the sword he’s carrying on his back, though, Osamu isn’t surprised if his stamina could rival the real Kita’s.

For the first time since they’d met, Not-Kita actually stops to smile, and it is not a terrifying smile. On the contrary, his smile is small and almost warm, though it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“You can call me Guide.”

* * *

“We’ve arrived.”

Surrounded by trees and greeneries, the castle should look more out of place. Built with rocks and bricks, the castle stands even taller than the tallest of the trees, casting an impressive, intimidating shadow over Osamu. The gates are unguarded and made of old wood, vines coiling around the stems. Osamu has never—not even on the Internet—seen anything like this before.

“What is this place?” Osamu asks as his guide (ironically named Guide) escorts him inside, muttering something Osamu doesn’t understand when they stand before the gate. With a raise of his hand, the gate groans open, letting them inside.

As soon as Osamu steps over the threshold, he feels it: He can hear the Earth and magic humming in the air, almost singing; the weight of the enchantments cast over them suffocate and amaze him; his fingertips prickle with something close to electricity.

“Welcome, human,” the Guide says, sparing a look over his shoulder to throw Osamu a wicked smile, “to the Kingdom of the Folk.”

“Am I dreaming?”

“You’d be a fool to think so.”

“I’m definitely dreaming. Yer shittin’ me, right?”

“It’s a miracle I haven’t cut off your tongue.” The Guide stops when the both of them are right in front of a grand door as tall as ten Atsumus. “Speaking of tongues—watch yours when you speak in front of the Prince.”

Osamu snorts, looking mildly unimpressed. It’s a miracle he hasn’t lost his shit, or had a full-on breakdown considering the things he’d gone through in just the past day. “What, or _he_ ’s gonna cut off my tongue?”

The Guide smirks. “Maybe he will.” That promptly shuts Osamu up.

With a wave of his hand, silver mist trickling from his fingertips in the form of a key, the door creaks itself open.

The inside is nothing at all like what Osamu had expected. He’d figured he’d see more stones adorning the walls, cobblestones lined on the floor; instead, the interior of the castle is grand, grander than anything he has ever witnessed. Fine gold adorns the walls in twined leaves and the floor is paved with leaves and little droplets of silver. Every step he takes makes little noise, and the further he steps inside, the more he can feel old magic humming in the air, power thrumming in his veins.

“Where _are_ we?” Osamu asks, still gaping as he takes in every detail; so focused is he in his surroundings that he nearly bumps into his Guide’s back. The Guide flashes him a dirty look. Osamu doesn’t care enough to apologize.

“I’ve told you already,” the Guide says, sighing in exasperation. “It’s the Kingdom of the Folk. Do keep up.”

The Guide leads Osamu to an empty corridor lined with paintings of various things. Some of trees, some of flowers, and some of nymphs. The paintings move and dance, chattering and giggling excitedly amongst each other; Osamu’s brain is close to circuiting, because paintings don’t just _live_. Life isn’t a Harry Potter movie.

“Are the paintings… talking to each other?”

“Yes. Why wouldn’t they?”

“Paintings don’t _talk_. They don’t move either, for that matter. Those are called videos.”

“You think you know everything, don’t you?” The Guide pauses his stride, and he sways slightly to the side to pierce a glare right at Osamu’s eyes. Osamu freezes, feeling like he’d been struck with ice. “Guess what, _human_? You don’t. The world is so much bigger than just your measly technology and your short, stupid little lives. There’s a whole other world out there and it’s bigger than anything your pitiful brain could ever think of.”

“Um,” Osamu says. “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

The Guide splutters, his eyes widening and cheeks going red. For a moment, Osamu wonders if he will yell. He’s only mildly disappointed when he doesn’t. “You deserved it for doubting our culture.”

“Sorry,” Osamu yawns. “Just never seen anything like it before. Thought this shit only existed in movies.”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? The things you learn when you’re not stuck in your own world?”

Osamu’s eyes narrow, and he takes a step closer to The Guide. He’s close enough that their arms almost brush. “I’m not here for a field trip,” he says, making sure his words come out clear, “I’m here for my brother.”

The Guide rolls his eyes. Osamu notices his eyes aren’t like Kita’s. Instead, they’re a pupilles silver, and now that Osamu is close enough to see his every visible detail, he makes note of the little, black horns portruding from his head. Almost like a headband.

“Keep following me, then. Although…”

“Although?”

The Guide grimaces, looking away. “I can’t guarantee the state of his safety. If you were serious about finding your brother, then we’d better hurry.”

* * *

If Osamu’s head had paused when he’d seen the Guide and recognized Kita’s face, his head could’ve _exploded_ the moment he stepped into the courtroom and saw Suna Rintarou lounging on a throne, looking every bit like he was royalty belonging to these golden walls.

“Suna?” Osamu chokes out, even as the Guide shoots him a glare that tells him to keep his mouth shut. Osamu ignores that.

“I’m sorry, who?” Unlike Suna, his voice is velvet smooth—it’d be like hearing Suna’s voice if he were purposely trying to adopt a businesslike, but almost alluring, tone. A laurel made of golden flowers rest above his head, though it falls to the floor without care the moment he shifts in his throne made of roots and branches adorned by leaves and flowers, leaning forward in his seat _just_ so. He cocks his head to the side as he takes in the sight of Osamu wearing a ratty shirt and pajama pants, feet covered with blisters and hand not faring much better.

Osamu is terribly underdressed compared to not-Suna’s wardrobe; from the purple button-up shirt with rolled sleeves with a satin glow, down to the dress pants, beige in colour, he’d chosen to wear. Even without the most kingly of poses, with one leg strewn across the floor while the other was tucked to his chest, not-Suna made for an imposing, regal figure.

Osamu almost bows.

“You look like someone I know,” he says, instead of attempting a clumsy ‘Your Highness.’ “That’s all.”

Not-Suna laughs, the sound of it tinkering and almost musical. “I’ve heard that one often. Tell me, what do I look like in your eyes?”

“Like my friend.”

He rolls his eyes, though from the way he’s smiling, he almost seems amused. “What does your friend look like, then?”

Osamu faintly gestures at his hair. “Long-ish dark hair, about this length.” He makes a notion at the spot slightly beneath his ears. “Sleepy cat eyes—they’re intimidating, but ‘ya didn’t hear that from me. Um—golden eyes? They’re hazel, almost gold. But not coin gold? His eyes don’t look like money. I don’t think they do. Not oil gold either—oil gold, like the shade of golden ‘ya tend to get when yer cooking and the oil starts heating up and frying the food?”

“Not oil gold.”

“Yeah.” Let it be known that Osamu has never been lauded for his descriptive skills. “Oil gold’s more close ‘ta yellow.”

Not-Suna just looks at him for one, long moment; doesn’t even bother saying anything. Osamu doesn’t squirm, but if he does, he would’ve squirmed under his stare—it’d be less intimidating if he were dressed in the Inarizaki uniform, but not-Suna is dressed like a king. It’s hard to _not_ fidget when you’re being stared down by royalty.

“I was told you’ve come to look for your brother,” he says once Osamu’s broken their eye contact first by dropping his gaze to the ground, finding something interesting in the sight of his dirty, wounded feet.

“I am. ‘Ya seen him?”

“I wouldn’t know whether I have or not if I don’t know what he looks like,” he comments, faintly bemused.

So again, Osamu repeats what he’d said to the Guard: “He’s my dumber twin with a bad dye job. Looks like a bee.”

Instead of looking at him oddly like the Guard had done before, recognition dawns upon the Prince’s face. This time, his gaze is less intimidating and more contemplative—calculating. “I know where he is.”

“Really?” Osamu forces himself to drawl, trying not to sound as desperate as he feels. _Don’t trust anyone_ is etched on his brain, and Osamu doesn’t plan on staying—he’s going to go back home with Atsumu in tow, and if that means being paranoid and suspicious of every little thing, so long as it’ll get him to his goal, then that’s exactly what he’s going to do. “Care to tell me where the dumbass is?”

The Prince laughs. Instead of melodic, this laugh is darker; almost foreboding. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. Tell me, how would you feel about making a deal?”

“Depends on what the deal is,” Osamu challenges.

“You’re not going to accept my offer without hearing what it is?”

“Only an idiot would do that.” And Osamu’s aware he isn’t the smartest, but he’d done his research. Pages upon pages had warned him of a fae’s most lethal weapon: Its words. Although they couldn’t lie, they could _twist_ the things they said, and considering their lifespans, Osamu wouldn’t doubt this was a skill they’d refined for centuries.

Osamu has never been one to use his head. Not because he _can’t_ , but because he doesn’t care—there is nothing for him to use his head for, nothing to fret over. But things are different in this circumstance. If he has to forcefully oil the cogs in his head and get them moving the way they _must_ to somehow, miraculously, outsmart the fae, all for Atsumu’s sake—

That would be his duty, and not one he would easily forsaken.

The Prince laughs again, a little less menacing and a little more genuine. “I like you. How about this: If you complete all of my requests, I will give you your brother back?”

“How do I know that you even have him?” Osamu sighs. “For all I know, yer just trying to trick me,” he accuses.

Instead of looking offended, or throwing Osamu out (thus letting his trail go cold and leaving him to wander around a forest barefoot with only one set of clothes), the Prince laughs again; except this time it’s a laugh Osamu had yet to hear from him, laughter that is snide as it is real.

“I really do like you,” he says. He looks at Osamu with a challenge in his gaze. “You’re smarter than your brother.”

“Atsumu? Was he here?”

“He was,” the Prince answers. He observes Osamu’s expression, trying to find a crack in its impassive front. The straight line of his lips falters, nearly frowning at the mention of his twin, but the neutral expression returns in just the split of a second. “Fae cannot lie, Miya-san.”

“How do ‘ya know my name?”

The Prince smiles, and Osamu realizes maybe he does _not_ want to know how he’d found out.

“What do you say? Do we have a deal?”

“I’ll need to make several conditions.” Osamu narrows his eyes.

The Prince straightens in his throne. His fingers drum against his armrests, chin propped atop his palm. “Oh?”

“I’ll do three tasks,” Osamu says, because he’s heard that three is a sacred number. If there’s any chance of him scoring brownie points with the magical folk, might as well use whatever scrap of knowledge he has. “They can’t be impossible for a human without magic to do. I want to _actually_ finish my end of the deal,” he grumbles, ignoring the way the Prince’s expression lights up with glee. Weirdo. “They can’t be tasks that’ll take me more than a month.”

“A month in fae time?”

“In _human_ time.” Osamu wants to get this over with and get back to his regular, boring life, where he spends his summer days lounging under the sun and eating chilled watermelons on the warmer days. Osamu may have been thrust into a world filled with magic and wonder, and maybe it’s enough adventure already to last him a lifetime, but Osamu is more aware than anyone else that he doesn’t belong. Not him with his normal eyes and normal ears, and completely ordinary set of skills.

He just wants to find Atsumu and go home.

“Alright,” the Prince agrees. “Three tasks…” he is quiet for a moment, mulling over this. Osamu is left wondering if he’d just signed his soul to the devil—or a faerie, in this case.

The Prince grins, showing his row of perfectly sharpened teeth. Just another one of the things that differentiates him from Suna, whose teeth are perfect, but aren’t as sharp as a predator’s.

“I have just the quest for you.”

* * *

**JULY 25, 2013?**

Osamu doesn’t sleep a wink, and that’s saying something, considering the chamber he’d been assigned to. Not even his parents’ bed had ever been as soft as the bed he’d been given; it felt like what Osamu imagined memory foam would feel like, from all the commercials on the TV, except better. More magical—as if it was attuned for him and him only.

Despite the bed and the bath they’d drawn him (and it was the first time Osamu had ever bathed in hot water adorned by leaves and flowers, ‘to add to the scent’ as the fae assigned to aid him had said), though, he couldn’t close his eyes.

While he was being treated with luxury, like he was some sort of _esteemed_ guest instead of a reckless human who’d messed with things he didn’t understand for the sake of his brother, he doesn’t know how Atsumu is doing. How he’s faring with his circumstances, or even _what_ circumstances the fae had put him under. The Prince hadn’t been forthcoming with details, ignoring every one of Osamu’s questions, only speaking when Osamu had asked about the details of his quest.

“You’ll see tomorrow,” the Prince had said and waved him off. Osamu was flanked by several guards and he was led to the room meant to be his temporary home.

To him, this is more like resting in a pit of vipers.

Perhaps that’s why he hadn’t slept. With the fear of being bitten heavy on his mind, Osamu lays awake, thinking of Atsumu and all the things he might have to do. Nothing on the Internet prepared him for this part: Nobody ever wrote on _what_ you were supposed to do after you successfully struck a deal with the fae, one that left them less of a leeway to fuck with your head.

Osamu’s on his own now, no more knowledge preparing him for what’s to come, and it _terrifies_ him. Osamu can’t sleep and he can’t lie down either; instead, he sits on the floor and leans his back against the bed, his knees curled close to his chest and forehead pressed against his thighs.

“Remember why you’re here,” Osamu tries to say, and hates how he doesn’t sound sure of himself. He sounds like a scared child: Wounded and unsure, unknowing of the next steps for him to take. While it isn’t completely wrong, Osamu doesn’t want to show any weakness—not when he’s lying right in the enemy’s hands, and he doesn’t know if his room is even _private_ or if there are magical bugs and security cameras surrounding him right now, broadcasting his every move to the Prince for him to laugh at. “Remember,” Osamu repeats.

This time, his voice comes out stronger, and he nods approvingly to himself.

Though Osamu doesn’t sleep the rest of the night, he’s more at ease than he was before, slight as the change was.

It doesn’t change the fact that the next day the servants come in to see him with reddened eyes, the beginnings of a dark circle staining his skin and a flat, utterly dead glare.

“The Prince has instructed us to dress you,” says one of the bolder servants once him and his partner have stopped gawking at Osamu’s face. It isn’t surprising the fae don’t get it: Considering they were _supposed_ to look ethereal, Osamu can’t imagine them ever having to deal with looking half-dead after a long, sleepless night.

“I can dress myself,” Osamu retorts. Like _hell_ he was about to let some people—fae—he didn’t even know to dress him up. Maybe Atsumu would’ve reveled in that sort of thing, boasted once or twice about being important enough he didn’t have to put his own clothes on, but Osamu isn’t his twin and he values the sacred privacy that comes with putting your clothes on your person by _yourself_.

“He insisted, and we answer to him, not you.”

Osamu sighs. Maybe he should’ve stayed at home and waited for Atsumu to come home on his own. “At least let me change my own underwear.”

* * *

Breakfast with the fae prince is less of a formal affair than Osamu had expected.

After they’d dressed him in clothes that made him blend in slightly more—even now he’s fiddling with the pale green collar of his dress shirt and scratching his long, caramel pants, because this is _ridiculous_ and he’s dressed like grown-up Peter Pan—Osamu was escorted to the prince’s room.

“How is your meal?” The Prince asks. He’s sitting right across Osamu, hair still mussed and wet from his bath. Osamu misses showers—they’d been efficient, speedy; he doesn’t have to spend at least half an hour in a bath because the proper etiquette was, apparently, to do it until your fingers prune.

“I can cook better than this,” Osamu says. He evenly meets the royal’s eyes as he finds himself unwittingly stuck in another staring contest he never asked for, but Osamu is petty enough he glares holes at his head until his eyes burn and water.

“You should cook for me sometime, then.”

“I’m not yer servant.”

“As a _friend_.”

“I’m not yer friend either.”

The Prince puts a hand over his heart. Osamu has a clear view on the long, sharpened claws protruding from his finger beds. It’s like if Wolverine was in a fairytale and he never washed his nails, although the dark colour of the Prince’s claws could just as well be attributed to nail polish.

“No one ever said you couldn’t mix business with pleasure. We’re all friends here—except, you know, for you.”

“I don’t care about that,” Osamu says. He doesn’t snap, but his tone is tight and his eyes are fixed in a glare. “Told ‘ya I just want my brother back then we’ll be out of yer hair.”

“I also remember telling you that you need to complete a quest before you can get him back,” the Prince retorts. Osamu hates how he doesn’t even have bedhead; he’s stayed at training camps with Suna before, and the real Suna always had untamed hair in the morning, little brown sticks spiking out everywhere, before he could tame his locks via a long shower featuring a specific brand of hair conditioner.

The Prince sighs and dabs the corner of his lip with a napkin. “Formalities are over, then. I’ll fill you in on your three tasks.”

Without another word, Osamu leans forward in his seat.

“I need you to find dinner for me.”

Osamu’s face darkens and twists in an annoyed scowl. “Are you going easy on me?”

“I haven’t said _what_ you needed to find.” The Prince rolls his eyes, not at all intimidated by what Osamu would call his most surly expression. “Go north past the castle, and when you come across a crossroads, take the west path. The east path leads to the village, but the west leads further into the wild.”

“Seems counterproductive to have me hunt for something than just buy them in the village. What, yer citizens hate you or something?”

“What I want for dinner,” the Prince continues, ignoring Osamu’s interruption, “are eggs from a flock of geese native to a lake in these forests. Once you’ve gone west, walk for another five-hundred steps and head east. Keep walking and you’ll find the lake right past the meadow.”

“Can I write down all of this?” Osamu asks. Go north, and go… south? Wait, that wasn’t right.

“No need. I’ll assign a member of my personal guard to keep you from getting lost.” And running off, though he didn’t say that one out loud.

When Osamu is introduced to someone who looks _exactly_ like Aran, it says something about how he’s forced himself to accept this is his new reality as his own when all he does is bite back a sigh, instead of recoiling, as he had the first two times, like he’d been struck by the edge of a sharp blade.

* * *

“Are you sure we didn’t accidentally go east?”

“I know where I’m going, human.”

“Osamu. It’s _O-Sa-Mu.”_

“Fine, _Osamu_. I know where I’m going and we’re still a ways from our destination. We don’t have time to stop for idle chatter.” The Guard, because of course that is what he’d like to be called, doesn’t sound cold or unkind despite his words. Osamu actually _likes_ the Guard.

He isn’t judgmental like the Guide, nor manipulative—Osamu _knows_ he’s up to something that he can’t figure out—like the Prince. The Guard is straightforward and impassive, maybe, but at least Osamu doesn’t find himself walking in circles around him—although the two of them _may_ be walking in circles trying to find the mysterious, goose-ridden lake.

“All I’m trying to say,” Osamu says, “is that we’ve been walking for _at least_ three hundred steps—yeah! I’m counting ‘em!—and there’s nothing in the distance. Or around us. Unless the lake’s behind these trees.”

The Guard pulls Osamu by his collar before Osamu can run off to check behind the trees surrounding them. Osamu struggles against his grip, but the Guard is strong—even stronger than the real Aran, who is athletic, but is only a volleyball player compared to the monster-slaying specimen Osamu would reckon the Guard is—and his attempts at escaping are flimsy and pathetic.

Thank fuck no one else is there to witness this. If Atsumu saw this (or even _heard_ about it), Osamu would never hear the end of it.

“What are you doing,” the Guard flatly says.

“I was trying to see if there’s anything _behind_ these trees,” Osamu grumbles, already giving up on freeing himself. The Guard lets go of his hold and Osamu falls back on his feet, shaky and unsteady; having to grip the bark of a tree to keep himself from falling and humiliating himself even further.

“Only more trees. We must keep going.” Without another word, the Guard continues walking and Osamu scrambles to keep up. Osamu is in good form; even in summer, him and Atsumu exercise and train as often as they can, even if it’s Atsumu’s idea and he’s the one who drags Osamu along. Still: He’s supposed to be fit, but it’s still a challenge keeping up with the Guard’s quick, long-strides. Osamu finds himself jogging just to keep himself from being left behind.

“Is work busy?” Osamu tries to ask. He doesn’t wheeze or pant; his stamina’s still fine, even if he’s now actively switching between jogging and running to keep up.

“What do you mean?” The Guard asks, features morphed from impassiveness into one of confusion.

“Just—dude, yer really fit. D’ya have to fight invasions on the daily or something?”

The Guard gives him an odd look. “No.”

“Then _how are ‘ya so fit?_ ”

At this, the Guard actually _smiles_ ; oddly enough, the sight is not terrifying, though by all means it should be. Unlike Aran, the Guard has long, swirling horns on his head (they’re called Kudu horns, Osamu had found out) and the tips of his ears are even sharper than the Prince’s.

“Pick up a weapon and train with it daily. Then you will know.”

“But I don’t _need_ a weapon.” Osamu pauses. “Do I?”

The Guard’s smile turns wry. “You never know what you’ll need in a place like this.”

Their arrival is marked by the squawking of goose and the sound of flowing, running water. Osamu unbuttons his shirt and places it on top of a tree branch. He looks down at his pants and hovers his fingers over the hem.

“You might as well take them off,” The Guard says. He’s watching the scene with amusement. “No point in walking back with wet pants. It’s just an inconvenience.”

Osamu rolls his eyes and says, jokingly, “No peeking.”

The Guard turns to face the tree, shoulders shaking with mirth. “Then who’ll save you if the goose drag you under?”

Osamu’s upper lip scrunches in consideration. “Good point.”

The water isn’t as cold as it could be; maybe because it’s summer, so Osamu doesn’t think twice before walking into the water, wading at first, then swimming once he’s submerged to his chest. A glance around him shows nothing at first: Only water surrounding him, the reflections of trees and wild weeds clearly shining off the greenish-blue tint. Osamu swims and swims, unsure of where he’s going but trying to explore any direction he can, only stopping once he sees a flock of geese crowding together several strokes away from him.

“Got ‘ya now,” Osamu mutters and cackles to himself, ignoring the judging look the Guard throws his way.

“You might scare them off if you keep talking to yourself,” the Guard says. He’s walking along the path right next to where Osamu swims, flitting his eyes between Osamu and the flock.

“I thought they hated fae. You’re the one who’ll scare ‘em away, not me,” Osamu grumbles.

The Guard sighs. “That’s why I’m not the one jumping into the water.”

“That and this is _my_ quest, not yours?”

“Exactly.” The Guard and Osamu share a grin.

Once Osamu is close enough to the flock, he takes a lungful of air before submerging himself completely inside the water. His eyes burn when they open, taking their time to adjust to looking through water; once Osamu’s eyes work as well as they could, vision still blurry and mildly burning though at least he isn’t going in completely blind, Osamu sneaks closer to the flock.

It should be easy for him to take an egg from their nest and swim away as fast as he can, but things don’t always go the way you want them to.

The geese notice him and they squawk and protest, splashing the water as they try to swim away. Osamu’s hair is _tugged_ by a goose and he yelps, water going straight into his lungs. He chokes and sputters underwater and practically yanks his head from the lake, gasping lungfuls of air into his burning, aching lungs. The goose is shaken off his hair, but instead of running away like the rest of its friends, the goose swims forward to Osamu’s chest, butting its head against his skin.

Turns out getting butted by a goose’s beak hurts more than it looks.

“Ow!” Osamu yelps, pushing the goose away as lightly as he can. He’s already _stealing their kids_ , the least he can do is to make sure they can… make more kids. “Be careful with the chest,” he says, as if the goose understands him at all.

The goose squawks and Osamu will swear to his grave that he was _glared at by a goose_.

“What, ‘ya got a problem with that?”

The goose shrieks and Osamu _doesn’t scream_ as he swims away from it, going for the eggs right by its nest at the edge of the lake. The rest of the flock who notice him squawk and yell, and so begins the Beaking of Osamu Miya: Geese beak at his arms and his stomach and several attempt to bite his leg, all the while he’s struggling and yelping as he attempts to swim back to the surface. While this is happening, the Guard is laughing hysterically at his misery.

Tough crowd.

When he gets out of the water, the geese latching off his skin and glaring at him with their beady little eyes, his skin is red all over and everything is stinging with pain. Osamu winces, poking a mark right by his belly button. “Do you think this’ll scar?”

“No,” the Guard says.

“But they _bit_ me.”

“Geese don’t have teeth,” the Guard says again, like explaining something simple to a child.

“But their beaks were sharp as fuck.”

“They’re beaks. These injuries are minor.” The Guard gingerly places his second and third finger on a red mark swelling on Osamu’s arm, frowning contemplatively. “You’ll recover. Do they hurt?”

Osamu gapes. “Of course they do! I’ve been yelling in pain!”

The Guard doesn’t look at him with pity; he only frowns even deeper and lightly pushes onto the wound he’d been touching, causing Osamu to wince with his eyes screwed shut at the painful sting it brought. “My healing magic is mediocre at best, but it’ll have to do.”

“Healing magic? What do you—”

“Stay still.”

So Osamu does, even as the cold bites into his skin, clawing its way onto the pink marred by injuries. Osamu shivers, forcing himself to think about something, _anything_ , that weren’t his injuries caused by the geese. He forces himself to latch his eyes onto the moss covering the trees; the dead, little branches still adorned by red-and-pink leaves. He keeps his eyes up and away from himself, and when the trees have etched their every detail onto his mind, he observes the Guard. Watches how his eyes are closed as his brows furrowed in concentration, a bead of sweat falling in a free line from his forehead to his chin; memorizing the purse of his lips as he focuses on gathering energy from the air, moulding the whispers of the Earth into something else, into energy that gathers in the palm of his hand like a shapeless bulb of light.

Then the Guard opens his eyes and the last thing Osamu sees are a pair of silver pupils and dark, golden lashes, before the Guard rests his glowing palms on Osamu’s cheeks, closing their gap by resting their foreheads together.

“Um.”

“Be quiet,” the Guard hisses, and Osamu gulps; attempts a shaky nod.

Warmth flows from his cheeks to his chest, then his arms, and all the way down to his legs. The warmth is unnatural; he has never doused his arm in crackling fire before, but he imagines this is what that feels like, except the heat spreads throughout his entire body without once hurting him. The sun licks his wounds and patches them close together, filling his body with something _new_ , something old.

When the Guard lets go, the warmth is still there, dancing inside his body as an old friend.

“What was that?” Osamu croaks. When he dares to look at his stomach, his skin is still red, though it has lost the beak marks that’d covered his flesh.

“Healing magic,” the Guard supplies. Maybe the two-word answer would’ve been sufficient to answer all his questions had Osamu known more about fae or magic, but Osamu _doesn’t_ , and he’s only left with more questions than before. He eyes Osamu’s mostly-healed form, contemplation alight in his sight. “It appears even the slightest bit of healing magic is enough for humans. I wonder,” he hums, “how it’d look like had someone poured more magic into it?”

Osamu shivers; has the feeling he does _not_ want to know the answer to that.

Their return to the castle is marked by silence, but Osamu hugs the eggs close to his chest. One down, two to go.

_Atsumu, hang on just a little longer. I’m coming for you._

* * *

When the Prince eyes the pinkish-red dotting his arms (it leaves Osamu feeling incredibly scrutinized, pinned under a no-nonsense gaze), he doesn’t laugh; but his lips curl into half a smile, even as Osamu scowls and tugs his arms behind his back.

“I see you came across some trouble,” the Prince says.

Osamu rolls his eyes, ignoring the urge to poke his cheek at the spot where he’d been beaked on his left cheek, just a few finger taps away from his lower lid. “No shit, Sherlock.”

“Sherlock?” The Prince doesn’t understand the reference. It leaves Osamu feeling vindicated and smug knowing at least, for this one thing, he knows something the Prince doesn’t—so he shows it through an entirely too obnoxious smirk. “Forget I even asked,” the Prince sighs. “The Guard healed you, I presume?”

Osamu experimentally waves his healed hand and runs his index finger over a pink trail, lips pursing when the notion doesn’t leave him feeling any pain—or anything at all. It’s numb.

“Numbness is normal,” the Prince says as if he’d just read Osamu’s thoughts. Or maybe they were just plainly written across his face. “You should regain your feeling back in a few hours.”

“Why is numbness normal?”

“It’s just the way magic is.”

“So your magic doesn’t confine to any laws of logic? Like knowing the mechanisms of something instead of just accepting it for what it is?”

The Prince hums thoughtfully, rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I suppose,” he begins, “we never had a reason to rationalize magic. It’s just magic. So long as it works, it works.”

Osamu can’t imagine a philosophy like that being popular in the normal, human world. If everything was accepted on the basis of the reason that it just worked, how would someone go about knowing what to fix if something went wrong? It’s like his recipes—Osamu knows what goes into his food, has every ingredient and instruction memorized by the heart; so if someone were to complain about the food being lacking (though that was a rare occurrence by itself), or needing something _more_ , Osamu isn’t left in the dark, wondering how to fix or improve something he hasn’t the slightest idea of other than the basis of it _just working_.

(He would be a terrible magic-user, most likely, having far too many questions and doubts as opposed to just accepting things for what they are.)

“It’s alright if you don’t understand,” the Prince says, and he laughs. “You’re not here to learn magic.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t still question it,” Osamu grumbles under his breath.

“You’d explode your pretty head off if you do,” the Prince retorts.

Osamu doesn’t know how to feel about being called pretty by fae royalty. If Atsumu were the one standing before him in all of his leaf-crowned glory, Osamu guarantees he’d be grinning and flirting up a storm; but Osamu is not his twin, so he does not grin and flirt. He frowns instead, the line of his lips toeing the border of bemusement and something more tiresome.

“What’s my next quest?” Osamu asks in lieu of forming an actual response. Evading detonating bombs in a field of hidden mines.

“I need you to pick some leaves for me.”

“I’m sorry, _what_.”

“Pick some leaves,” the Prince repeats breezily, ignoring Osamu’s dumbfounded stare. “I doubt you’d want to go into it unprepared, though.”

“What, or the trees are gonna kill me?” Osamu snorts. His eyes widen when the Prince doesn’t dismiss the claim. “I could get killed by _trees_?”

The Prince beams. Osamu isn’t close enough to punch the smarmy twitch off his lips. “That’s why you’re going to choose your weapon first, of course! Go to the village tomorrow and pick up something from the Blacksmith.”

He doesn’t sound remotely joking when he warns, “You’ll need it.”

* * *

**JULY 26, 2013?**

Mocking eyes and murmured gossip are what greets him in the village.

The village is nothing like Hyōgo: It’s nothing like _Japan_ at all, although it is not medieval or ancient either, unlike what’d sprawled in Osamu’s imagination the moment he’d heard the term ‘village’ instead of something more modern, more metropolitan.

Instead of straw walls and streets paved with hay, the village is marred by mushrooms and cobblestones. The sun is nowhere to be found, but the village is bright and lively, still; blue, red, and green paint the village with shining neon lights, mushrooms glowing brightly like flames atop tended bonfires.

Beauty means nothing when all Osamu feels in unease, though. Unease if he’s even going to get to the Blacksmith safely or if he’ll be mugged by hostile fae—could be a far stretch, but Osamu isn’t taking any chances, not when every fae he passes eyes him the same way one would look at an ant scurrying beneath their boot. _Just because I’m human doesn’t mean I’m any less,_ Osamu thinks, scowling at anyone who looks at him too long.

Nobody is intimidated. This doesn’t surprise Osamu, who now has a fairly clear idea on what the fae are about—and if there’s _one_ thing they are not, it’s respectful to _lowly_ humans, who as far as they’re concerned, should be licking at their feet.

It’s infuriating and degrading, but just like their magic, it is what it is.

The blacksmith’s shop, once he arrives, stands out amongst its neighboring buildings. Instead of a painted red roof or stones forming a wall, the blacksmith’s shop is a simple stall. Osamu squints at the sign hanging off a wooden pole situated off-ways from the shop. The alphabet makes no sense to him at first, swirling little patterns that look like variations of narutomaki to his eyes. And then the letters rearrange themselves, swirls dancing and twirling amongst each other, until Osamu can read the letters in blocky capitals, KINZOKU’S FORGE.

“Kinzoku-san?” Osamu tests.

It’s almost a relief when the man who emerges doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to any of his friends.

The blacksmith squints at Osamu, and Osamu doesn’t gape at the sight of _normal_ , non-beady black eyes (after days of shaking off unease at the sight of a fae’s pupilless eyes), but confusion and hope simultaneously claw through his stomach, up to his throat. Kinzoku’s hair, a spiky salt-and-pepper mess, is held back by an onyx bandana; that isn’t even the most ridiculous of his fashion choices. Osamu wonders if anyone would approve of wearing a silver blacksmith’s apron with a yellow undershirt—or maybe this is what avant garde looks like in a place like this.

“What do you want?” Kinzoku asks, looking at Osamu with clear suspicion. The hammer he’s wielding suddenly appears at least thrice more intimidating.

“A weapon,” Osamu says. He is well-aware of how lame he sounds when the blacksmith doesn’t even look like he believes him. “I came here on the Prince’s recommendation,” he tries adding, and fumbles with his pockets in search of the letter the Prince parted him with.

He struggles to find it, blindly scrabbling for a piece of paper tucked somewhere inside one of the many pockets of his coat—fingers either meeting air or the soft material his clothes were made of, but no sign of paper.

While this is happening, the blacksmith continues to eye him with suspicion and disinterest. Osamu gets the feeling had there been more people in line, the blacksmith wouldn’t have hesitated to kick him out.

“Found it!” he crows triumphantly the moment he finds the paper, digging it out of his pocket. Unfolding the letter and attempting to salvage it from its rumpled state, Osamu grins sheepishly as he mutters, “Hold on a second.”

“You’re lucky it’s a slow day,” the blacksmith says.

“I know,” Osamu answers, wry and dry. Satisfied with the state of the paper, he hands it over to the smith, who reads over it with the most impressive poker face Osamu has ever seen. As the blacksmith reads, Osamu observes him and notice some things: His lack of horns and his normal ears, as well as the lines of his face that proved he was _ageing_. Unable to contain his curiosity, Osamu asks, “Are you a human?”

Kinzoku doesn’t answer, at first; the silence that washes over them drowns even the humming and whispering of the fae, of the magic hanging in the air and seeping into their bodies. Kinzoku only eyes Osamu for one long moment, black meeting grey; Osamu has the strongest urge to look away, but at the same time, the more intelligent part of his brain is forcing him to maintain the stare, whispering to him _this is a test_. Osamu has never been good at tests—his grades can speak for themselves—but gaining the approval of another human in a place like this _means_ something; so he tries, and doesn’t look away even when his eyes burn and his lids are close to drooping into a blink.

“Yes,” Kinzoku says. His voice is gravel on a highway. “I can see you’re one as well.”

“How did you… get stuck here?”

Kinzoku snorts, and Osamu wonders if _maybe_ he’d said the wrong thing. “You came here for my weapons, not my backstory.”

“Sorry,” Osamu mutters, properly admonished.

The blacksmith doesn’t accept his apology, nor does he reject it; instead, Kinzoku throws the letter Osamu had passed onto him into the fire, where the flames crackle and burn, warm orange twisting and dancing together in a deadly waltz. “What kind of weapon are you looking for?”

Osamu has never wielded a weapon in his life, unless he was counting the volleyballs he’d thrown at Atsumu’s direction to get him to shut up. “I don’t know,” he says, as earnest as he can. “I’ve never tried wielding anything before.”

“Wait here, then.”

Kinzoku retreats to the back of his stall, leaving Osamu standing, waiting for something—maybe nothing. He comes back not a minute after, carrying an assortment of weapons in his arms, tucking them to his chest and underneath his chin. It’s an impressive balancing act.

“Try these.”

“ _All_ of them?”

“Yes, boy.” Kinzoku glares, and Osamu realizes that if he’d literally put his own face at risk by carrying all of these sharp-edged weapons so close to his own person, then yes, maybe the blacksmith is being as close to serious as someone can get. “All of them. Come on, we haven’t all day.”

The first weapon Osamu picks up is a sword. At least, to his eyes, it’s a sword. When he expresses this to Kinzoku, the older man snorts and says, “That’s a rapier, lad. Not just a _sword_.”

“I thought all swords were the same,” Osamu says, cringing when he finds himself on the other end of a ferocious glare. “Or not.”

He fumbles with his grip on the rapier, cringing when the lightweight tip accidentally prods the blacksmith, nicking his arm. “Sorry.”

The blacksmith ignores the trail of blood oozing out of his wound and snatches the rapier from Osamu’s grip faster than he can blink. “Next one.”

The process is trial and error, and by the end of it, both Osamu and Kinzoku have their fair share of little wounds and grazes pinpricked across the traverse of their skin. The sleeve of Osamu’s shirt has been torn, too, leaving the full expanse of his arms exposed even when they’re the most sensitive to the weapons he’s testing. Osamu was about ready to give up (maybe he could use a stick to fend off the trees instead, see how they’d like having their own kin used against them—though that may be a bad idea of the branches had a mind of their own and the trees sicked on them to attack _him_ instead) when he was presented with a spear.

Unlike the other weapons, that’d felt wrong and clumsy in his hands, the grip of the spear fitted snugly in his grip. Osamu balanced the spear, first with one hand, and afterwards with two; both times, the spear was evenly light, and all things right.

“Out of all the weapons,” the blacksmith bemoans.

“What’s wrong with this one?” Osamu asks, a little defensively. He doesn’t realize he’s hugging the spear until Kinzoku points it out with a judging stare.

“That spear”—Kinzoku eyes the weapon Osamu’s holding with no small amount of weariness—“has been passed down from my grandfather’s time, and no one has wielded it properly, until now.”

“Um,” Osamu says, “cool?”

“Not just _cool_ , lad. It means the weapon’s chosen you, and she’s the pickiest one here.”

“Am I s’posed to take that as a compliment…?”

The blacksmith barks a laugh; Osamu can see why he has so many smile lines marking the corners of his eyes. “Take it as you will. ‘Least I’ve gotten her out of my family’s hands, now.”

“You’re talking about it like it’s sentient,” Osamu points out. For some reason, the spear warms in his grasp.

“You’ve still got much to learn if you think she isn’t,” Kinzoku counters.

* * *

Osamu now knows why the Prince had told him to pick up a weapon before attempting to pick the leaves.

Dodging another thrust branch his way, Osamu watches with no small amount of terrified fascination when it pierces the ground he’d been standing on before, cleanly splitting a rock in two. Dancing with death—he’s _literally_ dancing with death right now, hopping and sidestepping all over the place as he attempts to pick leaves off docile branches, all the while _hostile_ ones are completely targeted on him, intent on making him pay back for all the times he’d spent in elementary school lying about planting trees for extra credit.

“You’ll grow your leaves back out,” Osamu attempts to plead, still running, because in his current predicament, stopping means death. In the literal sense. “I don’t know why you’re so heated about this!” Osamu must be losing his mind because he’s talking to the trees—the worst part is, he can _hear_ the trees replying to him, growling and angry at him for just picking their leaves.

His spear has left a path of chopped wood on the ground, a bloody path carved by dead trees, scattered petals and fruit. Osamu’s boots are dirty from where he’d stepped (squashed) an apple, but at least it wasn’t animal shit. “I don’t want to keep killing your friends!”

 _THEN LEAVE_ , the forest roars and Osamu cringes as he’s slammed by a dancing branch to the rind of the tree just several paces behind him. Still knocks the air right out of him, still hurts like a bitch.

“Can’t do that,” Osamu speaks through gritted teeth. With one last swoop of determination and a curse directed Atsumu’s way for making stupid decisions and putting him through this, Osamu tugs on a handful of leaves right from the tree he’d been slammed onto, frantically pushing himself off and running away once he’s gotten enough to line both of his pockets.

Osamu runs like hell, ignoring the outraged cries of the forest behind him, and doesn’t look back.

He is never, _ever_ , doing that again.

* * *

“More injuries, I see?”

“Fuck off.”

The Prince slinks off his throne and Osamu eyes him with no small amount of suspicion. He hates how graceful the Prince is, every step looking like a glide, and he hates how he can’t hate the Prince, even for all he’d put Osamu through; for the things he might’ve put Atsumu through, too, but Osamu just doesn’t know about. He hates how he can’t hate him because even through everything, the Prince has introduced him to a whole new realm of possibilities he’d never even considered, has given Osamu the adventure not just of this summer, but of his lifetime.

He hates how he can’t hate him, too, just because the Prince wears a Suna Rintarou-shaped mask. Maybe Osamu would have an easier time despising him had he looked more like a weasel instead of something divine; something holy, even when Osamu knows this is the fae who could slit his throat with a single swipe of his claws.

“What are you doing?” Osamu asks, suspicion coating his tongue. He stiffens when the Prince bridges the gap between their personal space; is close enough for Osamu to see the moonlike markings on his cheek, to count the galaxies scattered in his molten eyes. “Oi,” he warns—comes out shaky.

“I’m healing you,” the Prince says with a quick riposte, cradling Osamu’s cheek in his hand. The edges of his claws graze Osamu’s lashes. “You’ve still got one more task for me to do, you know.”

“What’s the task, then?” Osamu’s throat is strangely dry. He doesn’t let himself fall into the lull of counting the stars matted across the Prince’s face, but he wants to—God, he wants to.

“It’s a simple one,” the Prince hums thoughtfully. His other hand ghosts over Osamu’s arm, and something warm—while simultaneously cool—floods his senses. Healing energy, his mind supplies. His cuts knit themselves close, the wounds marring his pretty face disappearing without a trace; as if they were never there at all. “There, much better.”

Osamu hates how disappointed he feels when the Prince steps away. He doesn’t go back on his throne, instead conjuring a mirror in his hand, and casting Osamu’s reflection back at him. Osamu blinks at the sight of himself—not only good as new, but even better. His skin is glowing and his eyes are, too, and for the briefest of seconds, Osamu spies a golden glint swimming across his irises. When he blinks again, the glint is gone, but the ethereal, _inhuman_ glow stays present.

“What did you do to me?” Osamu rasps. He holds his cheeks with his fingers; it doesn’t _feel_ different, not drastically anyway, but it’s softer to the touch. It’s like touching clouds.

“I was only trying to heal your wounds, but I guess I accidentally let some of my own magic seep through. I apologize.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Osamu knows enough now to know it hadn’t been an accident. Accidents don’t happen with the Prince; everything he does, he does with purpose.

“Can you cook?”

The question comes out of nowhere, leaving Osamu to stare, dumbstruck.

“Huh?”

“Can you cook?” the Prince repeats.

“Yes,” Osamu is hesitant in his answer—not because he lacks confidence in his skills, but because he doesn’t know what it is they’re leading into. “Why d’ya ask?”

“For your next quest”—Osamu will swear to his grave that there’d been amusement in the Prince’s eyes, that sneaky, suspicious, _conniving_ bastard—“I will have you cook us a feast.”

* * *

**JULY 27, 2013?**

Osamu barely gets the chance to wash his face before he is scurried into the kitchens. Inside, instead of fae floating around, sprinkling herbs and powder into pans, he’s met with the sight of other humans scattered about the kitchen, cooking and cleaning and ticking off all the things on the list of menial house chores.

“These are humans,” Osamu says.

The guard who escorted him raises a challenging brow, wordlessly asking, _Your point?_

“Where do you even get so many humans from?”

“Not everyone was lucky enough to be given the chance and treatment you were.”

Osamu looks back at the memory of being attacked by geese, and just yesterday, getting his ass handed to him by a tree. If what he’d gone through was considered lucky, Osamu doesn’t want to fathom the thought of what the fae considered unlucky—and hopes his brother hadn’t been subjected to the fate.

Maybe because it’s humans working in the kitchens instead of fae, Osamu doesn’t run into the problem of magic when he prepares the feast; the cooking utensils provided are traditional and he’d kill for an electric mixer, but at least nothing requires him to do something along the lines of injecting his magic into a pan.

He’s cracking an egg when someone prods his shoulder; Osamu nearly drops the egg into the bowl, leaving him with a mess of mixed whites-and-yolks and more shell cracks to peel off, but Osamu is a _professional_. He saves the egg from falling, just barely, and does this in the split of a second.

“Impressive,” the person who’d startled him says.Their voice is high—higher than even his female classmates. When Osamu finally meets their eyes, he has to bend his head before realizing the person is a child.

“You’re a kid,” is the first thing that rolls off Osamu’s tongue.

The girl, with her pigtails and crooked apron, glares at him with all the ferocity in the world a ten year-old could muster. It reminds him of the time Atsumu had a staring contest with the puppy and the puppy ran off into the wild, never to be seen again. “I’m not a kid! I’m a teenager,” she huffs, and puffs her chest.

“Sure you are,” Osamu drawls. Because he makes it an effort to be infuriating—Atsumu’s legacy—he bends down to rest on his knee, just so they can see each other eye-to-eye. The girl seethes. “What are you doing here?” It’s an honest question, if anything.

“I work here,” the girl says, in a tone that says it should be obvious—and he’s the idiot here for not realizing that. Her mousy brown hair sways to the side when she peers at Osamu, tilting her head like she’s examining a curious object. “You’re the guest, aren’t you?”

Osamu flicks her forehead, ignoring her indignant yelp. He hadn’t even put any force into it; wouldn’t even have killed an ant so much as startled one. “Gossiping is bad.” He’s a hypocrite, but it’s not like she’d know he spends his time during practice exchanging pieces of interesting information with Suna.

“It’s not like there’s anything else for us to talk about,” she sulks. “So? Did the prince finally kick you out?”

“Finally?”

“Some of us were in your shoes at some point,” she says. Her expression shuts, features morphing from one of idle curiosity into one close to sorrow; Osamu has to force himself not to look away. Grief is always an uncomfortable subject, but it’s always so much less bearable when you’re seeing something you feel as if you don’t have the right to even glimpse. “I just wanted to go home to mum.”

Warily, Osamu asks, “How long have ‘ya been ‘ere?”

She mulls on the question, humming in thought. When she finally answers, Osamu wishes he was less of an asshole—that way he wouldn’t have his qualms about trying to comfort a stranger. “I don’t know,” she whispers. Her voice doesn’t crack, never does. Even as she forces herself to put on a brave front, Osamu pays attention to her eyes, and sees nothing but blue anguish. “A few years? Maybe more?”

Osamu is in no place to make promises.

He doesn’t even know if his brother’s future is guaranteed, and that’s who he is here for; there’s no space for him to form promises, sweet little empty words, to anyone else. It still doesn’t stop him from clasping the little girl’s hand in his, and saying, without even thinking, “I’ll help you escape.”

Her eyes widen, and Osamu sees the hope that flares to life.

He just hopes he won’t be the one to stomp and curb the flame again.

“Really?” It’s only one word, but the little girl pours all her wary hope into it; she sounds vulnerable. Raw, like Osamu could break her at any moment if he took back what he said—so he doesn’t.

“Really,” and he hopes it won’t end as an empty, unfulfilled promise. “What’s yer name, kid?”

“Hana,” she says, and sticks out her hand. Osamu shakes it, getting flour all over the floor. Hana, to her credit, doesn’t complain, even though Osamu knows his hands are slick with egg yolk and butter.

* * *

With Hana’s help, they manage to cook up a feast fit for the gods in less than a day. By the end of it, Osamu’s face is streaked grey with flour and exhaustion, and his fingers are sticky from handling rice, but at least he’s _finished_ and all that’s left is to offer the feast to the spirits.

(He wishes spirits meant something else, like an analogy of some sort, except when he’d asked this to the Prince, the fae had only laughed at his face. That’s how Osamu knows he’d meant actual, _literal_ spirits.)

“It’s a shame I didn’t get to taste any of it,” says the Prince.

Osamu doesn’t know why he’d decided to go with Osamu to the forest, as opposed to having the Guard accompanying him and breathing down his neck. Instead of wearing his stuffy, princeling clothes, the Prince is rolling up the cuffs of the sleeve attached to his sheen white blouse, high collar completing the look.

It’s still stuffy, but Osamu has gotten used to the wardrobe changes at this point.

“Yeah, my food’s pretty awesome,” Osamu agrees.

“Then you should cook it for me someday.”

“Hell no, I ain’t your servant,” Osamu spits, maybe with more venom than required. His tone is hostile enough it leaves the Prince reeling, quirking a bemused brow Osamu’s way. “I’m just making that clear,” Osamu mumbles.

The Prince doesn’t help him when Osamu methodically lays out the dishes one by one, arranging them in the way one would for a picnic, or a potluck. Although he’d mostly made onigiri—a simple dish, but it’s still one Osamu can vary per-piece—he’d also added some broth-y meals, because maybe the spirits are old-fashioned and fancy something hot and steaming to go with the weather.

Only after Osamu is finished with spreading food that the Prince chants something Osamu can’t make out. Osamu, having taken a few steps back because he’s now gotten used to the completely illogical ruse that is _magic_ , gapes as the meals he’d spread out begins to glow in earnest: First only a light shining through the plates, later on a golden light emanating off the food atop them.

Osamu blinks once. When he opens his eyes, the food is gone, and so are the plates.

“Hope ‘ya didn’t have to pay much for those plates,” Osamu says, unhelpfully.

He knows _he’d_ be protesting if some forest gods never returned his plates back home, but that’s because his family didn’t have an endless supply of eating utensils. The Miya family were a family of humans, not a royal family of fae with a trail of servants and limitless supplies.

“I didn’t,” the Prince chuckles. “Would you take my hand so we can apparate back to the castle?”

Osamu scowls and pointedly hugs his own hands close to his chest. “Like hell.”

“Alright then, suit yourself.” The Prince shrugs, and vanishes in half a tempo.

Osamu treks back to the castle alone, victory fresh in his mind—he’d finished all the three tasks, and now all that was left was taking his brother back.

And he’d do it, even if it meant wrenching him away from the fae’s grasp by force.

* * *

**JULY 28, 2013?**

Osamu rises to the smell of something funny.

Not funny in the sense of it smelling _bad_ , but the scent is foreign. If he had to pinpoint it, there’s a resemblance to one of the scented candles his mother would purchase and hang in the bathroom, but he can’t remember its name.

Cracking an eye open carefully, Osamu shifts to lay on his side. The moment he adjusts his position, his eye catches the sight of a laurel on the other side of the bed. It wouldn’t have been as much of a worry had it been any other laurel, but the crownlike wreath formed by the leaves closely resembles the crown atop the Prince’s head.

Warily, Osamu takes the crown in his hand, ignoring the smell of dried leaves and earth it wafts to his nose. His heart thuds against his chest, and he knows, the same way he’d known something was off that fateful day of Atsumu’s disappearance, that there is something gravely wrong.

Instead of a symbol of power, or even victory, the laurel taunts and sings of his doom.

* * *

He can’t find the Prince anywhere, and he’d even gone so far as to barge in on his room without knocking on his door.

Instead of a Prince resting atop velvet sheets, he’d been met with the sight of nothing. The Prince’s room, though adorned with its fancy decorations the way it always was, notably missed its occupant. No servants were placed in the room either, no guards stationed at the door. The dread that had occupied Osamu’s stomach only grew stronger, that morning, and Osamu had to steady himself against the wall—paying attention to the brick that touched his skin—to keep himself from vomiting all over the floor, worry and anxiety on the forefront of his mind.

“Where is the Prince?” he asks the Guard once he finds him in the gardens, tending to the flowers without his usual blade fashioned against his hip.

The Guard stops sniffing the flowers to stare at Osamu with a dry gaze. “Good morning to you too.”

“Where is the Prince?” Osamu repeats.

“He’s preparing tonight’s festivities,” the Guard says with a sigh, and goes back to tending the flowers, paying no mind to Osamu at all. It’s more than slightly humbling, which is just another word for humiliating. “The ball he’s holding in _your_ honor.”

Osamu swallows. “Nobody told me about that.”

“Oh, right.” The Guard smiles. “It was supposed to be a surprise, so just forget that you heard it from me, yeah?”

Even as Osamu waits until the sun has risen completely in the sky, the Prince is still nowhere to be found, and neither is his brother—and Osamu is sick of waiting around.

He sneaks off to the kitchens, evading the patrolling guards and passing servants. Stealth has never been his biggest strength: neither him nor Atsumu have never learned the concept of subtlety, and Osamu’s hair, the grey bits of it at least, stick out like a sore thumb amongst the pale-haired folk. He manages to do it though, somehow, even if he’d stumbled on his toes and fell so hard his knee made a resounding echo. Thankfully, that’d happened somewhere nearer to the kitchens and further from anyone with questions—the worst that’d happened was his knee thudding and swelling, bones perhaps fractured.

“What happened?” Hana asks as he limps into the kitchens. The room is busy—even busier than yesterday, when he’d spent his time here to do part of his final task. “Did someone kick you?”

She sounds more excited than she should about the prospect of somebody hitting Osamu’s knee; so Osamu scowls his fiercest scowl, the one that always gets Atsumu to back off his snacks, but the look does nothing to hinder Hana’s amusement.

“I fell,” Osamu grumbles. “Can I ask you something?”

“What is it? You'd better not be asking me to help you cook again! It took forever to get the smell of eggs out of my hands, yanno!”

“Do you know where my brother is?”

Hana freezes. Her face, previously twisted in a playful scowl, completely shuts; Osamu knows her answer.

“Where is he?”

He doesn’t threaten, because Osamu has morals and one of them is not to scare the shit out of a little girl. Still, his voice goes low, and he looks at her with the gaze of someone who’s desperate for answers—because he is. He’s been going along with the fae’s whims and requests, but all of it has only been for one thing: His brother’s safety.

(Even now, he has no guarantee of it, and Osamu hates himself for feeling like he’s already failed.)

“I don’t know where he is now,” Hana finally says, keeping her eyes fixed to the floor. She doesn’t dare to meet Osamu’s own. “But a few days ago… he was in the kitchens.”

“He was here?” Atsumu had been so close, and Osamu hadn’t known—if only he’d ventured to the kitchens, if only he’d gone out of his room and stayed long enough out of his own head and seen the fae earlier for what they were—

“Yeah. And then you came to the kitchens yesterday, and the guards moved him. I—I don’t know where to.”

So close.

His brother had been _so_ close.

Failure digs its talons into him, clipping his wings.

“Okay,” Osamu forces himself to say through his shock, as if all he wanted wasn’t to disappear. “Okay. He was… okay though, right? They didn’t hurt him?”

Hana’s smile is gentle, even as she hesitates to place a palm atop of his. How pathetic is he, having to be comforted by a girl with a fate much worse than his? Hana is only a child, thrust into a fate she’d never asked for when all she wanted was to find a way to return, and she’s the one trying to comfort him. Everything about this is wrong; leaves a taste more bitter than the coffee him and Atsumu had made for their father back before his health declined, before everything was suddenly _wrong_.

“I think he was just a little shaken up, but he was okay. He was really nice to me,” Hana admits. Osamu, in spite of his own turmoil, forces a shaky grin. Atsumu always had a weakness for kids—and he’d always wanted a little sister to dote on, despite their mother telling them countless times having twins was enough for her.

“Could he cook?” Osamu asks.

By the scrunching of Hana’s nose, the answer is obvious. Osamu laughs, even as his throat feels clogged and unshed tears blur his eyes. Absently, he wipes at his eyes, and covers it with a huffed cough.

“I was a better cook than him,” Hana grumbles.

“I believe ‘ya.”

“Hey, onii-san,” Hana says, after Osamu has gone quiet, “you won’t give up on finding him, will you?”

Osamu forces himself to scoff; forces himself to smile so hard it strains his cheeks and his jaw, eyes crinkled to cover their sheen. “‘Course I won’t!” he says, with more cheer than he feels, but no less conviction. “Who d’ya think I am, huh?”

Hana pokes his stomach. “A big crybaby.”

“I wasn’t crying!”

“I can tell you were gonna do it. Crybaby.”

“Was not.”

“Was too.”

“Was not—”

“Was. Too!”

* * *

Considering all the time Osamu had spent being treated as their special guest, Osamu would think he’d seen and experienced everything there was in the realm.

He’d been wrong, but at the same time, he hadn’t expected being dragged off for a _makeover_.

“Is this really necessary?” Osamu asks, even as the fae who’d been handling his hair yanks with a handful. Osamu lets out a pained, startled yelp at the tug on his scalp, shooting a dirty glare reflected by the mirror.

“We have to make you look your best,” the fae explains, sighing with dread. Osamu is now mildly offended—he doesn’t look _that_ bad, does he? He’s lacking the godlike, inhuman appearance held by the fae, but he’s always thought he was easy on the eyes. “That means making you look nothing like yourself.”

“I’m offended.”

“And I don’t care.”

The time he spends in the bath they’d drawn is mostly spent thinking; of plans and contingencies, paths of action he could take tonight. Osamu reviews the information in his head: Partying with the fae is dangerous, considered a red flag. Don’t consume anything they offer but don’t be rude about refusing, either; they could ensnare and trap you in their realm forever, or they could curse you for the rest of your life. The only reason why Osamu had been able to eat the food they’d offered him during his stay at the castle, risky move as it was, had been because the Prince assured nothing would happen to him until he finished all three of his tasks—the same reason why he hasn’t eaten anything all day, stomach growling in protest under the water.

Osamu prods his stomach with a frown. That’s a problem he’ll have to deal with on his own, somehow. Good thing he knows how to cook.

They slick his hair back with something that isn’t gel, but manages to put the same effect. His hair’s ridiculous, actually; Osamu faces himself in the mirror and doesn’t see Osamu Miya, sees someone else wearing his face. His forehead is on full display, bangs having been slicked back, golden kohl lining his eyes. They’d adorned his cheeks with patterns resembling leaves and the stars, a rich imitation of what the fae have.

“You weren’t so hopeless after all,” someone says, and Osamu would scowl, except words are out of his grasp.

Tenderly, he paws at his face—only skimming his fingers so he wouldn’t mess up the work that’d been done, but making enough of a contact he knows this is happening, that this isn’t a dream.

“Maybe if you tried hard enough,” a fae taunts, “you’d actually look like you belong.”

* * *

The party held in his honor occurs in the gardens—of course it does.

Osamu arrives alone, chin held high, spear strapped across his back. The fae part when he enters, tall and proud, like he is one of them.

(No amount of paint could ever make him one of them, but for tonight, Osamu pretends.)

“I see you’ve gotten your bearings together,” the Prince says. He holds a goblet of wine in one hand, offers it to Osamu’s face. Osamu, as politely as he can, pushes the goblet away from him with a smile. “No wine?”

“I’m not thirsty,” Osamu lies. He is parched and starving, but he can wait—he will have to wait. “Where’s my brother?”

And he’d been doing so well at attempting subtlety, too.

“He’s here,” the Prince teases, but he doesn’t lie. He cannot lie. “You just have to find him and take him home before something happens.”

Osamu eyes the Prince with suspicion, and the Prince breezily ignores him, smiling like he has no care in the world. “Was that a threat?”

“It was a warning—take it as you will. Come now, Osamu, dance with me.”

When the Prince takes him by the hand and swoops him into a slow dance, Osamu pretends his dancing partner is Suna. It’s not difficult, as they share the same face, and it is easier that way.

As they dance, the Prince smiles at him like he knows something Osamu doesn’t, and Osamu feels sick to his stomach when he forces himself to smile, too.

He is tired of playing the Prince’s games, but what else is there for him to do?

* * *

Osamu walks amongst the fae, though maybe ‘walk’ is too soft and wrong a word.

Dances amongst them, maybe; dances and dances until his ankles hurt and his knees tremble, dances until orange clouds and small streams of sunlight paint the sky, dances until he’s run out of time. Fawnskin covers his thighs and garlands flatten his hair, the Bacchanal poster boy.

“More to drink?” the fae tempt, a goblet filled with red cherry-wine liquid foaming and bubbling. If you intend to dance with the fae—though that is a practice most frowned upon in itself—lesson number one: Don’t accept their offerings, lest they trap you and leave you dancing forevermore.

“No, thank you,” Osamu declines, and twirls on his feet. He dances and dances, sweat trailing down his neck, euphoria creeping up his forehead. The fae insist, and “no, thank you,” Osamu repeats.

“More to eat?” the fae try once more, and a plate of smoked skin deer and mushrooms is shoved under his nose; something roasted and warm wafts from the food to kiss his nose, but if you intend to dance with the fae—though that is a practice most frowned upon in itself—lesson number one: Don’t accept their offerings, lest they trap you and leave you dancing forevermore.

“No, thank you,” Osamu declines, and moves his elbow in a complicated manoeuvre following the rhythm set by the music coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. The fae insist, and “no thank you,” Osamu repeats.

He doesn’t know how long he dances; doesn’t know how long his feet tap-tap-taps against the dirt covering the ground (bloody Earth, rotten Earth), doesn’t know how long his spins and sways and moves until his head is light and his fingers fuzz. Osamu dances, and dances, and never stops.

“Come now, surely you’re thirsty?” someone asks. Osamu can barely hear them from the ringing in his ears and the stars in his eyes. He has lost count on how much he’d danced.

“Maybe a little,” Osamu says, still light-headed and dizzy. He misses the onslaught of wicked grins, the rise of excited whispers from around him.

“Have a drink, then. The wine is sweet, and it’ll be good for you,” they croon.

Osamu feels something pushed close to his lips, and parts his lips, letting the wine slip through his mouth, and down his throat.

* * *

Osamu hadn’t realized his eyes had been closed until someone parts them open.

“What’s going on?” he slurs. The questions, ready to burst, wilt like dead flowers in winter the moment he sees who’d woken him up. A familiar head of mustard yellow affronts his sight, and there is Atsumu, wearing a waiter’s coat. “’Tsumu?”

“‘Samu, you _idiot_.”

Atsumu doesn’t cry. He hasn’t cried since middle school graduation, when the person he had a puppy crush on refused to take his second button, and he refused to admit he’d cried until Osamu pointed out the bloodshot red of his eyes. Right now, though, he’s crying, wet tears staining Osamu’s fancy shirt.

“Why did you drink the wine?”

“I was thirsty.” He isn’t thirsty anymore, but he is terrified—knows he’d done something that can’t be taken back, had done something that secured his place amongst the fae in the worst way possible. Osamu is _indebted_ to them now, and unlike the first time around, he doubts the folk would take kindly to letting him off with another measly set of quests. “You’re okay?”

“I did more chores than I ever had in my entire life within the past week, but other than that?” Atsumu laughs a watery laugh, leaving Osamu to frown. “I’m okay. But you…”

“Then it’s fine, ‘ya idiot.”

“Huh?”

“I can’t believe I gave away my life for _yours_ ,” Osamu says, not unkindly, “but ya’d better not waste the chance I’ve given ‘ya. If you do, I’ll force my way back just to kick yer ass.”

“'Samu,” Atsumu snaps, “I’m not leaving without ‘ya, you self-sacrificial jackass. You’re makin’ me look bad.”

Osamu sighs, and tries to look less defeated than he feels. It’s still a watered down, half-assed effort of him, but he’s trying—and Atsumu can see it too, if the pained look that crosses him says anything. “I don’t think I can.”

“No,” Atsumu denies, face stuck in a stubborn scowl, and grits through his teeth, “there has to be a way. You can’t just give up!”

“I’m not giving up!” Osamu exclaims, desperate to make Atsumu understand. He takes Atsumu’s shoulders with his hands and shakes him, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to startle. Atsumu stiffens, glaring at him. “Dumbass. You don’t think I _want_ to go back? I’m homesick and I’m fuckin’ _sick_ of all the mindgames these fae play, but I don’t have any other choice, ‘Tsumu. _I can’t leave_. I’ll keep finding a way to go back, and I won’t give up, but ‘ya have to leave without me. Or else neither of us will, and do you want to do that to mom?”

It’s a low blow, and the both of them know it. Still: It’s something neither of them can deny. Osamu doesn’t even want to _begin_ thinking about how their mother must be doing right now, with both of her sons missing, their house forming the ghost of a home. Their mother can handle herself just fine; it’s not that she needs Osamu or Atsumu to protect her, but she is their mother, and they are her children. The worst thing Osamu has thought of was the possibility that their mother could be blaming herself for their disappearance, when the truth is as simple as Atsumu playing with fire, and Osamu delving into the fireplace to stop him from getting burnt.

“Well, this is touching.”

The Prince approaches them with a snide, smug look in his eyes; it’s the look of someone who knows they’ve won, and Osamu wants nothing more but to punch it off his face. Or stab it off: He has a spear now.

“I told you your brother was here, didn’t I?” the Prince asks. On his tongue, the question is a taunt.

“Are you going to let him leave?” Osamu ignores the taunt, because Atsumu’s safety is the most important thing; it was all he’d worked for, and even if he’d fallen to the fae’s lure, he’s not letting it happen to Atsumu a second time. “We had a deal.”

“We did,” says the Prince in picture-perfect geniality. “I don’t intend to go back on my word.”

“Good, because that’s the least ‘ya could do,” Osamu says. “‘Tsumu, go.”

Atsumu looks between the two of them with uncertainty clear in his eyes, and Osamu has to resist the urge to shout. They’re wasting time. The Prince might be cordial now, but there’s no telling if he’ll change his mind—Osamu would rather not risk that chance at all.

“‘Tsumu,” he repeats, pushing Atsumu away from him. Before the fae, Atsumu had been the twin built with more muscle: Osamu always had trouble manhandling him, but now, it’s almost _easy_ , and Atsumu stumbles, falling flat on his bottom with a look of surprise. “I told ‘ya to go. Listen to me.”

 _Listen to me, for once,_ Osamu pleads. _Please._

“Oi, ‘Samu, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I already told you I’m not going anywhere without you!”

Atsumu doesn’t catch his silent pleas, pushing himself to a standing position, outstretching his palm to Osamu.

Osamu doesn’t take it, and ignores his crestfallen look. Instead, he shifts his focus to the Prince, who watches them silently.

“Can you send him back?”

“I can,” the Prince says, nodding.

“Then do it.”

He forces himself to look at Atsumu as the Prince raises his hand and begins casting a spell. The last thing he sees is Atsumu, trying to grab his hand, a yell on his lips and panic in his eyes.

Atsumu is gone before he can say goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case you were wondering: the prince, guard, etc. were all capitalized because that's their name :D at least, that's what osamu thinks is their name.
> 
> also!!! this... isn't betaread... so i'm very sorry for any mistakes T___T pls be gentle
> 
> I PROMISE THIS HAS A HAPPY ENDING... kind of


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: depictions of violence and blood, character death & discussions of death. please read with caution! <3

They don’t move Osamu out from his bedroom, much to his surprise. He’d been expecting them to do it, or at least, to throw him somewhere else at the end of thee night. He’d taken a sip of the wine. He’d sent Atsumu back without him, and all Osamu can hope for is that Atsumu is safe wherever he is, away from the fae and their dangerous games. 

He’s here. Stuck in their realm for some time he can’t discern, no viable way out. He’s here, stuck and forced to play their games, like all he wanted wasn’t to go home and run to his mother’s arms. Osamu’s read once, how someone who was far from home and haven’t talked to their parents for years, had been close to drowning: The name they called out to was their mother, hoping for her to come save them.

For Osamu, he calls for his mother in the dead of the night, when the halls are empty and his silence shrouds his room. If the fae were listening, hearing his cries and calls for home, they don’t treat him any differently. They eye him with amusement like he’s a plaything they’ve yet to be bored of, even as Osamu glares and spits at their feet.

“Why am I still here?” he asks the Prince. He doesn’t know how many days have passed since the ball; since he’d managed to complete what he came here for, sending Atsumu back home, even if he couldn’t return. “I thought you would’ve forced me into the servants’ wing by now.”

The Prince hums. He’s drinking his tea, and Osamu wishes he were a servant just so he could poison his drink.

“There’s still something else I need you to do for me, Osamu,” he says. He puts his cup back on the table and crosses his palms on his lap. Wears the face of an innocent prince, playing up the part of royalty, even though Osamu _knows_ this is the face of the boy who’d orchestrated everything. _He’d warned Osamu._ That’s enough proof for him to know he’d known something was happening, and the most he’d done was to give him a cryptic warning posed like a threat.

“What do you want me to do?” Osamu whispers. His voice doesn’t crack, but something in his will shatters. His head in his hands, he peers at the Prince through his fingers; his eyes aren’t red, and he doesn’t cry, though he is as tired as he is anguished. “What more do you want me to do?”

The Prince sighs and flicks some sugar at Osamu’s head. Osamu doesn’t dodge in time. “Stop being so dramatic.”

“You tricked me.”

“I didn’t. I wasn’t the one who lured you into drinking the wine.” Still, he smiles like he knows something Osamu doesn’t. It’s an infuriating sight.

“But you were the one who threw the party,” Osamu argues. “You could’ve just given my brother to me and sent us both back.”

“I could’ve,” the Prince agrees, nodding. “But I didn’t. Like I’ve said, Osamu: There’s something else you still need to do. Should you succeed, you can even come and go the realm as you please.”

It’s humiliating, how Osamu rises to the bait; doesn’t stop to consider this as another trick, another piece of entertainment to unfold in front of the fae’s eyes. But Osamu is homesick, and he is weary, and these two things combined can do many things to a desperate man.

“No more games,” Osamu snarls.

“No more games,” the Prince says with a grin. “Have I ever told you how I acquired my right to rule?”

“Let me guess. You were born into it? Your daddy was the all-powerful king?” Osamu mocks, uncaring of the possible consequences. The Prince has always been lenient with him; and while Osamu doesn’t know why, it doesn’t mean he’s shy from taking advantage of the privilege he has.

“No, actually.” At this, the Prince leans forward in his seat, and holds a palm up, cupping it near Osamu’s cheek. He murmurs, breath hot against Osamu’s skin, “I killed the king.”

Osamu jerks back, shoulders stiffened and eyes pinched in a glare. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he hisses.

The Prince laughs freely; the laugh of someone admitting they’d gotten away with murder, though in his case, Osamu doubts it’s more closely linked to nobody _caring_ he’d carved a bloody path to the throne. “He was a tyrant, and I was bored.”

“You killed a king,” Osamu says, slowly, “because you were _bored_?”

“There was nothing else for me to do.”

“I think there’s something seriously wrong with you.”

The Prince grins widely enough it splits his cheeks. “Don’t you think it was heroic, though? Saving the fae from the rule of a tyrannical king—I challenged him to a duel on his birthday, and hung his head on a pike the coming morning.”

“Um,” Osamu deadpans, “I think you’re the only person who’d be proud of this.”

The Prince doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by Osamu’s bemusement at the tales of his past glory. “What if I told you that you could go home? Overrule your binds, set yourself free?”

“I’d say that sounds too good to be true,” Osamu says, the sound of a man who knows the bitter taste of defeat. “But go on, I’m listening.”

“You could be king.”

“ _You’re_ already the prince.”

“Then overthrow me and ascend to your right to rule.”

Osamu’s rage and bitterness swirls in his stomach and gnashes his throat, scabbing it raw. These games had never been fun, but with the Prince bringing up a matter like this when he knows Osamu’s close to giving up; it’s less of a game and more of a victor’s taunting jeer. Osamu loathes it with everything he can. Loathes him, the Prince—and the fae, too.

“I’m not one of you,” he says through gritted teeth. Osamu glares, and his glare is received with a jester’s grin.

“Anyone can contest the right to rule here,” the Prince croons, “even humans like you.”

“What’s the catch?” Osamu asks, because there’s no way there isn’t one. He can’t even understand why he’s even entertaining the idea—the Prince likes his games and he likes waving the flag of Osamu’s failure in his face, and this should be another such instance. Instead, something about this, while still taunting and mocking, feels different. An underlying hint of hope sparks in him, cinders flying amidst its surrounding darkness. Hope—the most dangerous weapon, and one Osamu has right up his sleeve.

“It’s simple, of course.” The Prince’s eye glints with something Osamu doesn’t like; shivers traverse through his spine, a sense of foreboding rooting him in his place. “You just have to kill me first.”

* * *

“Wait a second— _kill_ you?”

“That’s right.” For someone who’d just announced the possibility of his own murder, the Prince is gleeful. Mirth emanates off of him in waves, carefree giggles wracking past his lips. “Just kill me.”

“Like… right now?” Osamu asks. He eyes the table. There’s a knife, but he’s not sure if the blade is sharp enough to pierce the Prince’s skin.

“No,” the Prince scoffs. “If you did it now, you’d be executed in a heartbeat. I’m talking in an official duel—you challenge me for the right to rule, and should you defeat me in battle, the title will be passed on to you.”

Osamu can’t even begin to understand this, and he wouldn’t know where to begin. He’d always known the fae were nearly impossible to understand, and he decided he wouldn’t put himself up to the fruitless attempt of deciphering them. But this was on another level of _something else_ : Osamu had just been asked to _murder_ someone, had it suggested to him even, from the very person he would’ve had to go through in order to wear the crown. Osamu peers at his empty cup, and wonders if the fae put mushrooms not only in the village, but also in their mouths.

“Why are you even telling me this?” Osamu’s voice is hoarse, not from disuse or sorrow, but from quiet disbelief. He barely manages to stop himself from slamming his hands on the table and scattering the crumbs from their meal everywhere. “What do you stand to gain?”

The Prince hums thoughtfully, pinning him in place with a contemplative stare. Time seems to stop as he mulls on his words, and he finally answers: “I’m bored.”

Osamu’s jaw drops in surprise. Neither make a move.

“You’re _bored_ ,” Osamu breaks the silence. He doesn’t know how the Prince is able to sound so unaffected.

“Yes,” the Prince admits, “I’m bored. I killed the previous king because I was bored, too—but now I’ve seen that ruling isn’t as fun as I thought it’d be, and there’s nothing more for me to do. Nothing to conquer, nothing to live for.”

“There has to be _something_.” Osamu doesn’t even know why he’s trying to convince his enemy to live, but something tells him his words don’t matter. A sinking feeling, maybe; one that turns into realization, later into acceptance, when he meets the resigned look in the Prince’s eyes. He does not look like a future king, nor a man begging for death. Rather, that is the face of a man who is already dead, and lingers as a ghost of himself.

(Osamu wonders if the Prince had ever lived.)

“I think we both know the answer to that.” The Prince sounds the kindest he has ever sounded towards Osamu. He is almost gentle when he smiles, frail and breakable, but with determination. “Duel me.”

Osamu has difficulty finding his voice again.

“When?” he asks, a strangled thing.

“I’ll give you a month to prepare. Face me at sundown a month from now, Osamu—and we will see who lives to see another sunset, then.”

They don’t shake on it, and they don’t even promise; there is still something magical and binding in the Prince’s words, marking the surety of the vow in their hearts.

* * *

“You need to work on wielding your weapon.”

Osamu hadn’t known why the Prince was at his doorstep before the sun even rose, but knowing _why_ he was there did nothing to soothe the bags under his eyes, nor did it do anything to dissipate the heavy urge to slam the door in his face and go back to bed.

“No,” Osamu groans instead, and attempts to shut the door. The Prince holds it open by blocking it with a foot. “No. ’S too early,” he slurs, sleep-hazed.

“Do you want to go home or not?”

That wakes him up. Osamu’s back straightens and he gulps down a yawn, though his eyes are still blurry and stained by gunk. “Fine, ‘ya dictator.”

He takes his spear from the foot of the bed and hugs it close to his chest like a bolster, trodding several steps behind the Prince as they head towards the training hall. Though he’s still half-awake, Osamu pays attention to the direction they’re heading, eyeing the hallways he has never passed before. He’d never taken his time to explore the castle on his own—not because of fear, but the castle was _big_ , and Osamu knows enough to acknowledge its occupants would rather laugh at him than help at the event of him getting lost.

“Have you named your spear?” the Prince asks. It’s weird, seeing him make conversation without an ulterior motive written plainly across his face.

“…Why would I name it?”

The Prince bears uncanny resemblance to the blacksmith when he calls, “You’ve still got so much to learn if you think you shouldn’t.”

Training with the prince is different from hacking at air or stabbing signposts—or his door, or trees. The Prince is light and steady on his feet, and even without a blade, he evades Osamu’s rough jabs with ease. Gliding through his feet, jumping on time, moving with all the grace of a dancer. It reminds Osamu of playing volleyball with a difficult opponent, one that can block his spikes and spike through his blocks.

“Maybe move less.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?” the Prince grins.

Osamu doesn’t know how long they train, too busy being swept up in a mockery of a deadly dance with the prince, a prelude of what was to come. The Prince instructs him as he moves, barking orders or shouting, “Aim higher, hold your spear straighter!” whenever he caught Osamu slacking. By the end of it, Osamu’s arms burn and his muscles sing with relief when he drops the spear, letting it clatter to the ground. Sweat pours down on him, not in beads but in streams, and he’s only slightly miffed when he sees the Prince has barely broken a sweat.

“What weapon do you wield, anyway?” Osamu asks, though maybe pants is more accurate a descriptor. He’s still struggling to catch his breath while the Prince wastes his on a bout of laughter.

“A sword. And a bow, though I’ll only be bringing my sword to our duel, don’t worry,” he assures. It isn’t very reassuring, as Osamu gets the image of running around in an arena from fire arrows while jumping and sidestepping all over the place to dodge deadly stabs.

“Would you…” Osamu trails off, hesitating. The Prince waits for him to go on. “Would you actually kill me?”

The Prince doesn’t even stammer. “Of course. It’ll be a fair fight to the death, yes?”

Osamu eyes his spear, fingers twitching. Though the aching in his muscles persist, practicing has never seemed more tempting.

“Try not to worry too much,” says the Prince, seeing where Osamu’s gaze had landed. “You’ll catch up.”

They are silent for a while. Osamu thinks, and the Prince waits.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Doing so much to help me,” Osamu spells out. “You could’ve just left me to train on my own, but you’re _helping_ me. Why?”

The Prince yawns. “I’ve told you before, haven’t I? I’m bored.”

He isn’t the only one Osamu trains with. Osamu meets the best spear wielder in the village; a fae who shares Gin’s face, and later on, his apprentice who looks so much like Akagi it’s not even funny. The image of Ginjima having Akagi as an apprentice is something Osamu doubts would ever leave his mind.

“So, what’s the verdict?” Osamu asks to Gin’s Twin (his name is more fun that way) after a gruelling mock battle. His arms and legs are sore, because handling weapons are different from a normal sport like volleyball, but Osamu’s gotten used to it. He’s seen the blue-and-purple bruises marring his skin, the signs that he’d worked harder than he has before, and wears them proudly, even if at first it was difficult to look into the mirror without cringing.

“You’re getting better,” the Apprentice offers, only to be shot down by a glare from his teacher. “Okay, not me, sorry,” he says with a hilariously small voice.

“But am I getting better?” Osamu asks Gin’s Twin.

“I guess you aren’t hopeless,” Gin’s Twin says begrudgingly, and Osamu considers it a victory. Gin’s Twin raises his bow and nocks an arrow, aiming it at Osamu’s direction. Osamu runs. “Your dodging is pathetic, last at least a minute this time!”

He shoots and barely misses Osamu’s shoulder.

Training with Gin’s Twin and his apprentice is spartan, and if Osamu ever manages to come home and play volleyball again, he vows never to complain about his coach’s drills ever again.

* * *

Time passes, as it always does, whether Osamu likes it or not.

He doesn’t pay attention to the seasons—more often than not, he’s cooped up in the castle, brandishing his spear against invisible opponents. Bruises litter his skin, an ocean of purple marring cream; but Osamu doesn’t mind and ignores the pain, ignores the sting, ignores everything. Nothing matters more than his own survival, even if his body pays the toll.

If he comes home, he knows he’ll be answering questions he cannot answer, so he doesn’t think about it. Osamu doesn’t think about Atsumu’s possible reaction either, even if can’t stop himself from worrying if his brother would blame himself for this. It may have started as Atsumu’s fault, but now this is bigger than Atsumu, than either of them. If Osamu comes home, he refuses to let his brother shoulder the blame; the burden is already his to bear.

“Why do you try so hard?” the Guard asks. When Osamu isn’t training with the Prince or Gin’s Twin and his apprentice, he trains alone, reserving the training hall for himself. The Guard lingers at the doorway, never entering or helping, rarely speaking. Sometimes Osamu forgets he’s even there. “What would you gain out of putting so much effort?”

Osamu pulls his spear out of the ground and twirls it in his hand. His dexterity has improved. Volleyball should be easier now. “My freedom’s on the line. Why wouldn’t I be working hard?”

“Is it so horrible being here?”

Yes, would’ve been his automatic answer. But Osamu pauses and thinks about the question. The fae hate him, and the feeling is mutual—but no one can deny the beauty of the castle with its tall walls and emerald vines, nor can he pretend the village isn’t beautiful with its burst of colours and mushroom lights. Hyōgo doesn’t compare, but at the same time, Hyōgo is home. This isn’t home. This is a prison, though served in a glittering silver platter.

Then he thinks about Hana and her servant’s dress. All the humans who’d been stuck here but hadn’t been as lucky as him, now living out the rest of their lives in servitude of a cruel, haughty bunch. “It could’ve been worse,” he finally says, “but I still wanna go home.”

The Guard helps him train for the first time. His technique isn’t as sharp as Gin’s Twin, and his body doesn’t dance like the Prince’s; still, he is steady on his feet, and his strength eclipses Osamu’s own, capable of pushing or even throwing him like he is a twig.

“Do you eat?” the Guard asks him as he helps Osamu up to his feet from where he’d been strewn against a bed of hay. Neither of them ask why there’s hay in the middle of the training hall.

“Sometimes,” Osamu admits. Food is still something he cares about and holds close to his heart, but even the grandest of feasts is bland on his tongue when his mind is focused somewhere else. “Nothing really tastes that great.”

“You need to eat,” the Guard completely ignores Osamu’s latter comment. “Build more muscle. You’ll just work yourself to death if you keep going like this.”

Osamu chuckles and hides his face behind his hands. “Might just die either way, won’t I?”

He claps the Guard on the shoulder on his way out before sticking his hand into the pocket of his pants. The Guard doesn’t move.

* * *

‘Tsumu,

If you get this letter, that means I’m gone. I asked the Prince to send this to you in case I don’t make it. I don’t know if he’ll actually send it, but I hope he does, or I’ll beat him up from the grave. Or wherever it is I’m buried. If they even bury me. I don’t know, I haven’t read up on fae burial customs.

Don’t blame yourself. You might be thinking that it’s your fault, or that you shouldn’t have done the stupid thing. To be fair: You shouldn’t have. What you did was a dumbass move, even for you, but it’s passed. I’m not gonna rub it into your face if I’m dead, but if I make it out, I’ll never let you live for that.

When I went into it, I didn’t understand how high the stakes were. I made deals with devils and got my skin bitten by geese—and I don’t regret any of it, even if I might never look at a goose the same way again. You’re safe and mom has one of us with her, so I don’t have any regrets. I don’t know if you told her the truth of what happened, or if you made something up. Knowing you, shit might’ve gone either way. I hope you at least made me sound cool after all the trouble I went through to save your dumb ass.

Before you hate me for the rest of your life because I left you alone: I tried. I tried to get out and I made another deal with the devil, because I never learn. Not when it’s my freedom at stake,not when there’s still a chance for me to go home. I’ve been learning to use my spear and I always wake up with my muscles aching—it’s even worse than volleyball camps, if you can believe it. I miss cooking in the kitchen, but lately, this is all I’ve been able to do. Practice and train, maybe have a meal when I don’t stay in the training hall too late. It’s like clockwork by now—second nature or some shit.

In a few days, I’m going to fight the Prince. If I win, I’ll get his throne (don’t care about this) and I can go home (I care about this.) If he wins, I die. Pretty fuckin’ high stakes, if you ask me. I don’t know how my chances are looking, but I’m not scared. I feel like I’ve gone through enough shit by now not to be scared of dying. That’s inevitable, ain’t it? If I lose, then I’ll just die earlier. It’s not like I wouldn’t die later on in my life, anyway. So if you’re reading this and you’re worried: Don’t worry. I wasn’t scared.

I’ll attach the written recipe of my onigiri. The one you and mom like. I know you can’t cook to save your life, but if I do end up dead, it’d be nice to have something from me live on.

You’d better have a good life, don’t waste the time I’ve bought you. I want you to keep living for the both of us. I’ll be watching, somehow—if you waste your chance, I might haunt you just to kick your ass.

\- ‘Samu.

* * *

Osamu stands before the forest, a crown on his head and spear in his hand. The trees once seemed tall and looming, but now, they are a familiar, soothing sight. Moonlight bathes him in a radiant transluscent light and the stars leave soft kisses on his cheek, even as all he does is stand, and stare at the evening sky.

Tomorrow is the day.

He looks down at his hands and clenches his fists; watches the way his hands are ghostly pale underneath the moon, though the purples that have since faded into sickly blues are still there on his skin. Signs of the work he’d poured in. Not battle scars, but still a sign of something.

“Why have you come?”

Osamu looks up and sees a wolf. The wolf speaks to him; it says enough about what Osamu has seen, what he has been through, that he doesn’t bat an eyelash. He accepts this for what it is, even if it’s not so different from a fever dream.

“I’ve come to seek your blessing.”

The wolf actually sounds amused when it says, “And why do you deserve my blessing?”

Osamu shares his story. Begins from that first day of summer, and talks of the day he’d woken to find his brother missing. He tells the tale of his trial amongst the fae, omitting nothing, and watches for the wolf’s reaction; sees how its eyes shift from something wary, though not unkind, and later, growing to understanding.

His throat is hoarse by the end of it.

“I just want to go home,” Osamu says.

He misses his bedroom; even its old posters and chipped paints. He misses his house, and he misses his friends. He misses his mother—and maybe even misses his brother.

“Very well.”

Osamu drops to one knee in front of the wolf and lowers his head, staring resolutely at the ground. The wolf takes several steps, getting closer to him until Osamu can see its feet right in front of him. He doesn’t move a single muscle; maybe he doesn’t even breathe.

The wolf howls at the sky, and Osamu can hear thunder, the crackle of lightning. He nearly jumps out of his skin when something bright passes across his eyes—a bolt of lightning falls from the sky and pierces his spear, but it doesn’t electrocute him. Osamu doesn’t close his eyes, even when his lids burn, and forces himself to stay still as his spear absorbs the lightning’s energy.

“Stand, child.” Osamu gets to his feet, slowly, and eyes his shield. Nothing looks different from it at a glance, but Osamu is sure _something_ happened to it. “Do you see the river?”

He can see it. The water glints, even from a distance, under the shroud of the night. “Bathe in it, for you shall receive one more boon.”

“Thank you.” Osamu bows his head. Then he heads for the river, where the water is pleasantly cold.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, swimming in the dark, but when he gets out of the water, his skin doesn’t prune and glints like steel.

Osamu doesn’t sleep that night, and maybe he’ll regret it later, if that would’ve been the last sleep he could’ve gotten of his life.

For now, that doesn’t matter. He’s ready.

* * *

There’s an audience cheering for his death, but that doesn’t surprise him.

No, there is no arena reminiscent of gladiators; no colosseums, no fighting rings or restricted confines. Osamu is brought to the throne room and sees it has been cleared of its decorations, only the throne remaining at its very apex. 

The fae watch him like this is a ball and him and the Prince will be having the first dance—and maybe they aren’t completely wrong, because Osamu has come to learn that duelling is a dance and weapons are an extension of one’s hands.

“The challenger for the throne,” someone announces; Osamu doesn’t recognize his voice, and he steps forward to meet the light streaming from the windows. The sun bathes him in bronze. His spear, one that he’d named Gungnir—it just sounded cool, a name he’d remembered picking up on from an anime about norse mythology that he watched in his spare time—glints brightly enough it is nearly blinding. “Miya Osamu.”

Although the fae can’t lie, what they _can_ do is boo. Their combined jeers and booing are enough to have Osamu thinking they could give Inarizaki’s cheering squad a run for their money. He wishes he had headphones. Osamu doesn’t let himself get affected by noise, but it’s distracting, and he’s about to fight for his life.

Distractions are the last thing he needs.

Osamu tugs slightly at the collar of his sleeve. They’d fitted him with something light and tight, though not uncomfortably; just something that’d give him freedom to move. They hadn’t bothered giving him armor, though they’d excused it was fine, because the Prince wouldn’t be wearing any armor either. (Osamu’s skin, when he’d poked it last night upon going home from the forest, is hard as steel, now. Armor doesn’t seem to matter anymore, though he does wonder if he has an Achilles heel.)

The Prince doesn’t require an introduction as he walks off his throne. His usual robes are tossed aside for something more similar to what Osamu is wearing, though Osamu notes his shirt is looser, its hem untucked. He carries a sword with him, and he raises it to the roaring of the crowd. 

“Good morning, Osamu,” the Prince says, in a tone so casual no one would think he might be Osamu’s executioner, “did you sleep well?”

“I didn’t sleep at all, actually.” Osamu picks his spear from where it’d been slung over his back. Holds it in an experimental grip at first, having to shift and toss it in his hands a few times before he finds a comfortable handle on it. The Prince watches him and doesn’t speak. How do you feel, Osamu wants to ask; how do you feel, knowing you have me at your mercy?

“You can sleep when you’re dead,” he jokes. Osamu forces himself to laugh.

“I don’t plan on giving up so easily,” Osamu vows, gripping Gungnir a little tighter. “Like hell am I gonna be easy pickings for ‘ya.”

The Prince doesn’t look the slightest bit offended—he even laughs, and shows Osamu what could even be considered a friendly smile. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

For a moment, Osamu doesn’t see the Prince—it’s Suna he sees.

And then the referee calls, “You may begin,” and he doesn’t have the time to dwell on the thought anymore; the soft, kinder look is replaced by one of concentration on the Prince’s face, and then Osamu doesn’t have the time to think because he’s too busy fighting for his life.

The swing of the Prince’s blade is fast and precise, like a butcher swinging his knife. Osamu dodges and parries the best he can, with mediocre skills honed through short-term intense practice; he holds his own, ducking and sidestepping each swing, but he’s so focused on trying not to get stabbed that he barely finds the momentum to counter-attack, leaving his shield almost useless in his grasp. The Prince fights with a ferocity unseen in their training, and Osamu had known that this was the real deal—but this is the final nail in the coffin, the final realization that _holy shit,_ he really _could_ get killed.

“What’s the matter?” the Prince asks in the middle of attempting to stick the pointy end of his sword somewhere in Osamu’s gut. “I thought you’ve been practicing.”

Osamu grits his teeth and counters his sword with a parry of his spear; he gets the chance to strike, and he takes it, pushing forward and nicking the prince’s arm with Gungnir. Blood trails from the Prince’s shoulder, a deep shade of onyx. “I have,” Osamu grits.

“First blood,” the Prince hums thoughtfully. His pause gives Osamu a precarious second to attempt another strike, but he jumps out of the way in time, landing lightly on his feet. His gracefulness would be breathtaking, had it not been so frustrating. “Congratulations.”

Osamu falters, for just a second; not from hesitation, but with the intention to wipe some of the sweat pouring down his forehead. It costs him, as the Prince hasn’t heard of fighting clean, and leaps forward to slice his sword across Osamu’s stomach.

This isn’t volleyball. Osamu can’t relax at all; even in the worst matches, the most exhausting, trickiest ones, he’d always gotten some time for reprieve. Time to catch his breath and wipe his brow when he’d just hit the ball, or when the ball’s in the process of being transferred to his side of the net. But this is a fight, and fights don’t have rules—not this one, anyway, and every moment Osamu spends hesitating is a window of opportunity for his opponent.

The blade is sharp and meets his skin like it’s slicing butter. Unlike what he’d expected, blood doesn’t spurt in a messy line, and he doesn’t immediately collapse to die from blood loss. His shirt stains red, but only barely; a thin, ruler-like line instead of the gash he’d thought it would be. Both him and the Prince halt their movements, Osamu stopping a cry in pain to let out a confused noise, while the Prince gazes at the barest of the wound he’d inflicted.

When the Prince looks at Osamu, Osamu shivers at the look in his eyes; he looks at Osamu with something close to excitement. “You’ve gotten your blessings, I see,” he comments. “No matter. I’ll just have to keep hitting you; no enhancement is full-proof.” He has a wicked grin that spells nothing but danger.

Osamu doesn’t deign him with a verbal response, and answers with his fist. Nothing was written in the rules about the use of physical force.

With all the training he’d been doing, his fist meets the Prince’s cheeks with a crunch, throwing him down to the ground. Osamu raises his spear and, forcing himself not to close his eyes, thrusts it down to where the Prince had been—only to have him roll out of place, standing up again with so much ease and poise it’d make a ballerina jealous.

Learning from his previous lesson, Osamu doesn’t give him more time to recuperate, thrusting forward with his spear aimed at the Prince’s heart. The Prince meets the swing with his sword, peering up at Osamu with a grin.

“I’m enjoying myself, are you?”

“Shut up and _die_ ,” Osamu growls, serving a flurry of swung, twirled motions. It’s one of the things he’d been working on with the Guard, and it leaves him with satisfaction as he sees the Prince struggling to block and dodge; it nicks his cheek, and a line of blood, horizontal, trails from a spot just a few fingers’ traces away from his left eye.

The Prince laughs gleefully as he comes at Osamu with even more energy than before. It’s a mystery, how he fights harder and happier with every blood on his person Osamu shed, but without any trace of desperation. He slices Osamu’s arm hard enough the pain leaves him howling, and blood spurts from his tendons. He doesn’t stop there, jabbing at Osamu’s leg, cutting a clean line across his knee.

“As long as I hit you hard enough, I can still draw blood, see?” the Prince smiles at the red pooling around Osamu; the blood that stains his spear, now, and lingers on his skin.

“It doesn’t matter,” Osamu forces himself to stay, holding his spear with his other hand. It isn’t his dominant hand, but that doesn’t matter; he’s trained with both, for emergencies and situations like these. Blood flows freely from his wounds, and Osamu has to stop himself from gripping his injured arm. He brandishes his spear, and closing his eyes for just a second, calls upon the power he’d felt yesterday, tugging something bright and crackling from the sky—and channels it into his spear.

When he opens his eyes, his spear is bursting with lightning and electricity, sparks flying everywhere. It doesn’t hurt him. “I’m beating yer ass, anyway.”

He roars a battle cry and charges forward. Instead of thrusting his spear, he holds it only slightly in front of him, and channels lightning to strike the Prince squarely across the chest without the tip even meeting skin. The Prince is blown backwards, back hitting the ground with a sickening crack. Osamu takes several steps closer, spear still charged with power, and holds his blade to the Prince’s neck.

As the Prince opens his mouth to speak, Osamu pushes the blade into his neck.

The Prince’s eyes widen with surprise and defeat; gooey black bursts out of the puncture on his skin, and then he’s gurgling something Osamu doesn’t understand.

He looks at Osamu, attempting a smile—his mouth freezes, stops moving, when his lips curl into a grimace.

And then he’s gone.

(Osamu is alive and he is alone; the lone human in a crowd of fae, alone in the middle of a silent arena, where the fae look upon him and the cold, dead body of their old prince with disbelief.

All Osamu thinks is, before his eyes force themselves close and his body slumps forward, is that it’s over. It’s finally over.)

* * *

This time, when Osamu wakes, he’s not in his room.

He’s in the Prince’s old room. 

They’d moved him to a dead man’s room, and he doesn’t know if it’s for better or for worse that the room hadn’t changed at all. Not a single furniture out of place, and even the Prince’s personal trinkets remain. 

Osamu forces himself to sit up, even as his muscles protest and his arms _sear_ with pain. He glances at the hand he knows had been hurt—it’s tightly wrapped with a bandage. When Osamu opens it, he finds the skin raw and red. Maybe healing through magic hadn’t worked. 

He takes a little figurine of a nymph from his bedside. It’d been the Prince’s favorite trinket: Something he’d gotten passed down from his mother, he had said, during a rare mood when _he_ was the one who told stories of himself, rather than compelling Osamu to. He turns the little figure in his hand, his thumb smoothing over the wooden polish.

As Osamu sets the little thing back down on the table, he sees an envelope addressed to him.

Gingerly taking it in his hands, Osamu tears the envelope open and finds a letter inside. The handwriting is one he has never seen before, but he knows who it belongs to without even looking at the sender’s name. 

_Osamu,_

_Congratulations for winning. I hope my death wasn’t too brutal, but knowing you, I don’t suppose I’ll ever know what to expect. You have made my final days the most entertaining; for that, I thank you._

_You will be coronated as king. After you have, you’ll find you have the freedom to do what you want—for me, I did nothing and let the kingdom run itself. It wasn’t hard. You have fine advisors, though I insist you check your goblet for poison in your drinks from now on._

_As promised: I’ve written instructions on how you can go home. You could go back to the woods you came from, and try to find your point of entrance. This could take some time. The woods are always changing, and you only have so much time before they try sending someone to usurp_ your _throne._

_Find The Guide. He lingers in the village, and his apparition magic is (was?) only second to mine. He’ll be able to send you home._

_I would say I’m sorry for all I have put you through, but I suppose I’m not. I did do it all to gain this—the best possible outcome for myself. It was selfish, and I won’t bother denying it._

_You have made my final days my best,_

_The Prince._

Even as Osamu leaves behind everything he’d gotten with him in the kingdom—even going so far as to entrusting his spear with The Guard, because he doesn’t know if he can explain going home with a spear strapped to his back—he keeps the letter safely tucked and hidden in his shirt. Thinking about the Prince hurts both his heart and his head, but keeping a little memoir shouldn’t wound.

* * *

The day of Osamu’s coronation is the day of his departure. 

His coronation ceremony itself is a simple one: Although the fae enjoy parties, Osamu had given out an order not to hold one in his honor, and they’d complied easily. Osamu gets the feeling his people don’t like him, but it’s alright, because he doesn’t like them either—and he _will_ be finding someone to replace him; just as long as he gets it to be someone who hadn’t tried to poison him and/or kill him in his sleep.

The Guard has reported an influx of new assassins. On his last nights spent in the realm, Osamu sleeps with his spear as his bolster and a dagger under his pillow.

“King Osamu,” the holder of the ceremony announces, placing a crown made of golden roses on his head, “the Usurper.”

Osamu thinks it’s unfair that _he_ gets the title of usurper when the previous ruler had usurped his predecessor, too, but maybe it’s because he’s a human, and they would hate everything he does anyway. Osamu doesn’t let any of it show on his face, even as the fae mock him with jeers and slow, pathetic claps. He only smiles and keeps his head held high.

“My first order,” he says, loudly enough his voice reverberates, “is to free one of the servants.”

“Of course he’d save one of his kind,” a noblewoman sniffs, “humans. How typical. How _boring_.”

Hana emerges from the shadows, where the guards had stationed her to stand earlier. She isn’t wearing the servant’s uniform anymore, and Osamu presumes she is wearing what she’d worn the day she was lost. She fumbles with the bow on her uniform, and Osamu’s eyes soften—hopes she will now get the life she deserves.

“Thank you,” Hana mouths, and Osamu raises his hand in a wave. This time, he gets the chance to say goodbye before she is gone, transported home by a mage. 

Osamu hopes he’ll see her again, one day; maybe in Tokyo, or maybe halfway across the world. His heart is warm and steady—he had kept his promise.

* * *

“You understand you _will_ have to come back?” his advisor doesn’t sound amused by his announcement, but he sees several nobles grinning at each other—like they’d been waiting for this moment to arrive.

Osamu doesn’t plan on giving them the satisfaction.

“I know,” he says, with the patience of someone who has grown too many grey hair in the span of the last few days, “and during my absence, I will have The Guard take over my duties as king.”

Someone splutters; another fae chokes. “But he’s only a guard! All he knows is how to fight!”

Osamu shrugs. “You might be surprised? I dunno. I’ll be back whenever I have break and I don’t have a training camp.”

“You would dare take precedence of this training camp over the fate of an entire kingdom?”

Osamu mulls over it, shrugging. “Yep, pretty much.”

* * *

On the day Osamu comes home, the sun is hidden behind clouds, and there is no sign of life in his house.

“Hello?” Osamu calls, looking around the empty walls. “Mom? ‘Tsumu?”

The door opens behind him. Osamu turns around in time to see Atsumu taking a step inside; only to completely halt in his tracks, leg just hanging there and everything, at the sight of Osamu.

“‘Samu?” he whispers, like he can’t quite believe it’s him.

“’Tsumu,” Osamu says, and before he can say anything else, he has a mouthful of Atsumu’s hair from where Atsumu had barreled himself into Osamu, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. Osamu is glad his wounds are fully healed, or else he’d be in even more pain than he is now—both physically and emotionally. “I can’t breathe,” he wheezes.

Atsumu lets him go with great reluctance. His eyes skim over Osamu’s form, trying to see if he’d been hurt—and he had, but that’s neither here nor there, and now he’s healed up enough Atsumu shouldn’t see a thing. Osamu doesn’t know if he’d be able to stop him, should Atsumu find out about the injuries he’d procured and decide it’d be good to barge into the fae’s realm _again_ , an even worse terrible idea than it was the first time around.

“How are you here?” Atsumu asks, voice going quiet in a rare show.

“Magic?” Osamu answers. Atsumu punches his arm, and Osamu laughs when Atsumu recoils his fist like it’d been struck. Osamu’s skin is hard as steel now. Punches don’t do much aside from inflicting harm on the puncher. “How’s yer hand?”

“What the _fuck_ happened to you there?”

Osamu grimaces. He hasn’t had nightmares on the events that transpired, but it’s not like it’s fun for him to recall. “Tell ‘ya later.” Atsumu must’ve sensed there was something wrong with him, something niggling in the back of his mind, threatening to flood out his throat; he looks at Osamu with suspicion. Osamu tries not to let a single thing slip. 

“Alright,” Atsumu says. His eyes are still squinting. “But you have to tell me what happened at some point,” he declares, leaving no room for protest in his tone.

That’s alright. Osamu wouldn’t have protested, anyway; he’s never going to prod this topic even in therapy with a five-foot pole, lest he get himself sent for a drug test, and Atsumu already knows what had happened. Some of it. He doesn’t know the blood crusted under his fingernails and doesn’t know the ghost of a prince living in his ribcage, never quite reaching his heart, but that’s alright.

Osamu will get there, in time.

“For now,” Osamu says, “I think I just wanna cook some onigiri and sleep away the rest of my summer.”

“Bad news.” Atsumu cackles at his face. “School’s tomorrow.”

“…Fuck.”

“Fuck’s a way ‘ta put it.”

Osamu doesn’t point out the lack of Atsumu’s distance. Even as he’s let Osamu out from his hug, he never strays too far from Osamu’s orbit; and sometimes, Osamu catches him staring at him with worry, a look he can’t discern but tells him his brother is afraid of Osamu dissolving again like smoke, this time for good. Osamu doesn’t know how to assure him he won’t, but he doesn’t push Atsumu away. Nudges their shoulders together when he can and gives him an extra plate of food, his way of saying he is here, and for now, he will stay.

* * *

Practice brings about another set of troubles.

Osamu can handle seeing Aran’s face, or Kita’s. Doesn’t so much as fumble when meeting Gin and Akagi’s eyes, and manoeuvres his way around their questions of his disappearance with half-responses and deadpanned truth, that they always take as a lie. (His mother hadn’t believed him either, when he’d said he was kidnapped by the fae, and conjured a story for him that he went missing while searching for Atsumu and got lost while Atsumu found his way back. The story is ridiculously lame compared to the truth.

Osamu takes it as his cover story, because no one will believe the truth even if he tells them, this he now knows.)

Suna Rintarou, however?

Suna is a problem, and Osamu doesn’t mean this maliciously. He means this as in: He can’t look at Suna during practice, and can’t do so much as to maintain eye contact when their eyes meet. 

When he’d done that, the first time, the world blurred around him and brought him back to the moment he had the Prince beneath him and punctured his neck with a spear—ending his life. He looks at Suna and doesn’t see his teammate; sees a dead man, a prince, a trickster, a man he’d murdered. 

Atsumu is the first one who realizes what is wrong. Everyone else notices there’s something off, but nobody had pinpointed it like he had, and Atsumu pulls his twin to the side.

“What happened between ‘ya and Suna?”

“Nothing,” Osamu says. It’s the truth.

Atsumu’s eyes narrow. Osamu hates how Atsumu can be smart, sometimes, when he _really_ needs to be. “Is it the Prince?”

Osamu doesn’t reply; and to Atsumu, that is a response. A sign of admittance.

He forces himself to look at Suna just to prove Atsumu wrong, even if he’s right. Suna meets his gaze without hesitation, hesitantly raising his hand in a wave. Osamu doesn’t wave back. His mind doesn’t bring him back to the moment of the duel, but the Prince and Suna stand side-by-side in his vision, a ghost with Suna’s face and a torn neck, blood spilled on his shirt, looming over Suna’s shoulder with a knowing smile.

The Prince’s letter he hasn’t stopped carrying with him rests heavy in his pocket; is hot enough it could burn a hole through the fabric. 

Then Osamu blinks and the Prince is gone, leaving only Suna standing there, glancing at him with confusion.

The letter still burns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not betaread yet (i probably will make edits and changes to typos and errors or whatnot from time-to-time still), but i hope you enjoyed it; regardless of whether you've read this story from its infancy or if you've only begun & finished reading now, i'm very grateful that you've stuck to the end to read it! it means a lot to me, especially if you've enjoyed this little (slightly niche) project of mine.

**Author's Note:**

> sit tight kids it's gonna be a bumpy ride
> 
> [my twt](https://twitter.com/genshinkaeya)!


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